My understanding of the founding of the United States, by which I mean the “1776” founding as opposed to the “1619” founding, is that the European Enlightenment inspired our founders to build a new democratic nation upon the fundamental values of freedom and equality. In the Declaration of Independence Jefferson wrote a line that has resonated throughout American history encapsulating these core beliefs —  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Clearly, within what was a new experimental American democracy the standard of equality was unambiguously spelled out. Also, the phrase, “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”, spoke to individual freedom and liberty. Can it be interpreted in these words, or anywhere else in this esteemed document, or for that matter in the overall founding endeavor itself, that one democratic value is considered more moral or weightier or more important than the other? I suggest not.

It seems evident to me that the founders concluded that for a democracy to function both freedom and equality were not only required, but were inseparable and equivalent in scope and magnitude. These principles were two corresponding pillars upon which rested the ideology and conviction of the new nation. We were to be a people who honored the right to exercise individual free will throughout the course of our lives while simultaneously respecting that this right is to be extended to all individuals.

Of course, the founders were flawed leaders despite their unique ability to systematize selected philosophical thoughts from Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Charles Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Despite their infatuation with the concept of a social contract to encourage individual freedom and equality, the founders nevertheless lived prosperously under a social system that permitted slavery, Native American genocide, and concentrated power in the hands of property owning males at the exclusion of women.

These failings however, should not take away from the ideational benefits which the founders debated and documented and left for generations of Americans and other lovers of democracy around the world to ponder and use as a guide from which societies can operate honorably. As Winston Churchill famously said, “Democracy is the worst form of government — except for all the others that have been tried.” It is reasonable to say today in the twenty-first century Churchill’s words still ring true.

Nonetheless, there is one troubling consequence which arises in matching the significance of freedom and equality. It comes in realizing there is a natural disengaging tension between the two. We are unable to optimize and to enjoy the fruits of both freedom and equality simultaneously and in similar measure. Let me explain.

When we allow individual freedom to be maximally expressed we soon discover a troubling reality settling in. A sorting of society’s individuals occurs like the pecking order of chickens in a barnyard. Wealth and power become concentrated among a self-professed elite group. The rationales for this aggregation may be centered on race, ethnicity, tradition, or generally perceived merit, but the result is always the same. A lack of social equality is the inevitable effect. Equality becomes diminished.

Similarly, an escalation of equality can lead to detrimental impacts. There can come a point in a social assigning of equal measure to each individual in a society when an over-homogeneity results. This can be characterized as a socially stultifying blandness in which people are pressured to all act the same and not drift from rigid social behaviors and thought patterns. Difference and innovation are reduced to being oppositional and uniformity is elevated to unnatural heights. Freedom becomes diminished.

We have a conundrum. As described above, freedom and equality are both of identical importance. But when each is augmented as much as possible an essential conflict emerges. Their shared power cancels out the advantages derived from each. What is to be done?

To start, we have to accept that each value carries with it great possible reward, but also great potential hazard. So instead of seeing co-nullification as an inevitable consequence when society attempts to practice the two virtues in tandem we can rather view them as keeping each other in check. It is a type of symbiose in which democracy needs both to survive. Yet a balance needs to be achieved in order to derive as much benefit and as little downside as possible.

In America, this striking of equilibrium is practiced by the two major political parties. One, the Republicans, seek to advance the cause of freedom over equality, while the Democrats vigorously promote equality above freedom. The outcome of this tug-of-war is the closest this society comes to a consensus of the freedom-equality strain of priorities. If the electorate sees too many disadvantages from an overemphasis of one side or the other, then election cycles should right the ship, depending on the pertinent issues of the day. So, if one is a diehard partisan, one has to learn to live with the heuristic that you win some and you lose some.

The greater problem, which America and other democracies are now facing, is when one political persuasion or the other decides to change the rules of the game. When striking the delicate balance between freedom and equality is thought of as too difficult to achieve or if impatience to get one’s way becomes too unmanageable such that undemocratic tactics become justified, then democracy is in trouble. When the arts of compromise and persuasion are abandoned in favor of a raw takeover of power leading to autocratic governance, then democracy ceases to exist and an unpleasant form of fascism or communism takes over.

I am writing this piece days before the 2022 U.S. midterm election. In other words, I and my fellow countrymen and women are both observing and participating in one big case in point. On the ballot, so to speak, is the question concerning whether or not American democracy, and its history of attempting to conduct free and fair elections, is to be continued, suspended, or abandoned.

The Trump-fueled right wing insurrectionists and their supporters, i.e., the Republican Party, sound as if they feel justified in canceling the electoral tradition. They are angry American society isn’t functioning the way they want it to. Of course, they are free to have their political leanings, even if their leanings are Euro-White-Male-dominated. But why is their grievance so pronounced that overthrowing free and fair elections can be considered just?

Sorry. I don’t see it. Coming of age during the 1960s I have seen social and political unrest. It is surely an experience of social disequilibrium. And it unquestionably both agitates and frightens significant segments of the culture. There can be both sound and absurd claims made by people. But that’s life in a democracy, isn’t it?

Things not going your way? Wish more of us would adopt your view of reality? Then be persuasive!  Convince us! Don’t change the rules to suit your own narrow interest. Who the hell do you think you are?!

Hopefully, I am needlessly worked up. The next several days will be instructive. How the 2022 midterms are conducted will portend the activism of the next couple of years. A satisfying endgame would be to see this MAGA movement as but one of several social-political episodes that occur periodically throughout American history. Like other unruly digressions of the aggrieved, it will soften and diminish, but nevertheless leave its mark on policy making for some time to come.

Long term, these societal spasms are likely necessary if democracy is to survive for centuries. However, they are weighed against other constants such as unconstrained elections and the tussle between freedom and equality. Striking a necessary balance between freedom and equality is truly an exercise in making sausage. It leaves democracy messy. However, let us not forget. Despite its innate churn, democracy contains within it the most civilized and just conception of how people are to live together that has ever been devised. Let us agree that its fundamentals should not be messed with.

“Toby! Toby! Where are you? Come here Toby!”

Toby was standing in the driveway of his family’s home gauging the wind speeds that morning by staring at the tops of a nearby stand of white pines. This meant he was close enough to hear his mother’s cries even with the windows closed. As was often the case, Mrs. Pelgren’s plaintive and desperate pleas were unrelenting once they started.

“Toby! I can’t do this alone. Come here, Toby! I need you!” Toby pivoted and slower than usual went for the side door of the house which let him into the kitchen where his mother was sure to be.

What is it this time?, he wondered. Something to do with his father most likely. Toby’s dad now required custodial care that was reaching the point beyond which Toby and his mother could competently manage. But the Pelgren’s, being who they were, did not consider obtaining additional care providers. Their situation was to be endured collectively, despite the burden each family member underwent individually.

“Yes, Mom?”

“Please sit down Toby before you go running off somewhere again,” Mrs. Pelgren said. “I need to talk to you.”

Toby sat obediently knowing more was about to be asked from him.

“I can’t do it all with your father, Toby. It’s just too much! Mrs. Pelgren looked at her son with her signature pained expression — the facial feature she seemed to wear most often nowadays.

“I know it’s difficult, Mom. You know I do what I can to help out Dad and I’ll do more as I have the time.”

“I hope so dear. I really hope so. It’s so tough. He needs so much. There is never enough time for me to do the things I need to do.” Mrs. Pelgren’s eyes became moist.

“I know Mom.” He did not like to see his mother in this state, but Toby knew he couldn’t change things. He stood up to go out to his car. He needed to get away from the house and his parents. As he walked behind his mother to get to the door he kissed her on top of her head.

Toby set the canoe into the river downstream about a half mile from where the river began to serve as a drain for the lake near the village. This stretch of the river required patience on the part of anyone hoping to navigate any kind of boat. True, a kayak would be more maneuverable when weaving in and out of the tangle of low-hanging boughs and half fallen trees that punctuated this wooded portion of the river. But Toby didn’t want to fish from a kayak. He grew up fishing with a canoe, was comfortable fishing with a canoe, and that was that.

Practice allowed Toby to zig and zag and work his way to the opening of a pond that was not too far downstream and which was cut off from houses and people due to its being surrounded by impenetrable wetland and the rough surrounding woods leading up to it. These same conditions made back casting during the summer in this small pond nearly impossible, so Toby decided to try wading.

Given the lack of rain ten days prior the water depth was manageable for his waders and he knew from past experience that the muck on the bottom in certain spots would not be too gummy. Toby was particularly excited to use some caddis flies his friend Dave had made. With the boat secure Toby waded in from the pond’s edge and spent the next three hours catching several 10-inch brook trout.

As Toby stood thigh-deep into the water of the still pond his mind vacillated between two states of awareness. One sensitivity involved being absorbed by the nature encircling him. The natural world and God were one and the same for Toby. There was no distinction. The shimmering light, the temperature of the water, the songs of birds, and countless other ambient expressions of nature at this time and in this space felt like caresses from the Creator.

The other impression occupying his consciousness was the seduction of fantasy. There were several at play. But they were all variations on a theme. They entailed Toby moving through life with confidence, finesse, and joy in his heart. Actions played out in locations that were imaginary — a reflection of his disdain for rootedness and routine.

Flipping between these mental states left Toby confused and imbalanced. It often did.

It happened again. Toby was in that place where he was too alert to nap, but to fatigued to function. He knew from experience that if he gave himself enough time he may eventually grab an hour or so of shut eye.

What intruded his thinking that afternoon was one of his reoccurring thought obsessions. Toby first read about this incident in one of the boy adventure books his grandmother used to give him at Christmas when he was younger. This book, the title of which was now long forgotten, consisted of a collection of tales meant to capture the interest and imagination of boys, who of course, liked risky and hazardous escapades. Perhaps Toby’s grandmother felt he needed a prod or two in that direction.

The yarn which struck Toby hard when he first read it at about age ten and which now was keeping him from sleeping was that of the wreck of the Monica Hartery. The Monica Hartery had been a seventy-three foot coasting schooner built in 1927 in Newfoundland and was being used by its owner at the time of its demise in 1933 as a trading vessel in and around the coast of Newfoundland.

In December of that year the Monica Hartley had sailed from Channel, Port aux Basques, Newfoundland to North Sydney, Nova Scotia to pick up a load of Cape Breton coal. The ship carried a crew of five.

After the coal was loaded, nasty winter weather set in. It delayed the departure of the Monica Hartery for several days. The crew members, all of whom ranged in age from 28 to 32, were anxious to set sail for Channel, Port aux Basques so they could be home for Christmas. Despite the continuing bad weather the impatient crew left North Sydney on December 23.

It is known that the night of December 23 and into the early morning hours of December 24 in 1933 the southwest coast of Newfoundland experienced a furious wind and blinding snow. A portion of the schooner’s decking was discovered floating near the entrance of Rose Blanche harbour, some forty-six kilometers to the east of Channel, Port aux Basques, on Christmas Eve. Later that day three bodies were found washed ashore nearby. A fourth was discovered three and half weeks later.

Toby felt so sorry for the lost crewmembers and their families. It seemed so unfair. Injustice disturbed Toby very much. And God was being very unjust on that day in 1933. The men just wanted to get home for Christmas. What kind of God would do such a thing! Toby still pondered the same thought.

Toby picked up the cappuccino for Nellie and a black coffee for himself. He balanced them carefully as he walked to the round high top table in the café where Nellie sat waiting.

“I’m glad I could get you to meet with me today, Toby,” Nellie said. “You’ve been hard to reach lately.”

“Well, you know. There’s work and there’s always stuff to do around my place,” was Toby’s response.

“Oh, yes. Your place. You mean your parent’s place, right Toby?” Nellie tried to make eye contact with Toby as she spoke, but his gaze would not meet hers. He looked downwards instead.

“Yeah, well, our place. I live there too,” said Toby still avoiding Nellie’s eyes.

“When are you going to get out of there, Toby? It’s way past time, don’t you think?”

Toby had feared Nellie would do this if they met for coffee. They had been friends since first grade and they knew each other well. Maybe too well was how Toby felt at that moment.

“It’s not so easy, you know, Nellie. Dad is sick as shit and Mom is going batshit trying to take care of him. I have to be there right now to help out.”

“Yeah, it’s too bad about your dad.” Nellie paused. “But you’re going to have to get of there sometime. You’re not going to be one of those losers whose always living with his parents, are you?”

Toby winced slightly. Nellie noticed. “I’m only trying to help you, Toby.”

Clearly Nellie was being impatient with him. Toby did not like it that she was.

“We’re going over to Jimmy’s shop after work, Toby. How about you coming with us?” It didn’t often happen that the guys Toby worked with would ask him to join them for beers after work.

Toby hesitated before responding. It left just enough time for Larry to quip, “C’mon Toby, drink a beer with us!”

“Sure. Thanks. OK,” Toby stuttered. The invitation left him floating somewhere between grateful and anxious. He knew he should do this. It is healthy and good to interact with others Toby was often told. But social situations almost always left him a bit fearful.

So, the four of them that comprised the crew of Don’s Landscaping hopped into their pick-ups and went over to Jimmy’s garage, which served as a tinkering workshop for many of Jimmy’s crafty hobbies and also as a man cave where beers were drunk and cigarettes and joints were smoked.

After his second Bud Light Toby knew he had had enough, but as was often the case at times like these he wasn’t quite sure how to extricate himself from the gathering. “Gotta go,” Toby said as he straightened himself up from the folding metal chair.

“But Toby”, said Don. “We want to hear more about what you think, you know about the big stuff. Life. And what it all means. You’re the thinker here. You got your ideas cooking up there. Give us regular guys some of your wisdom.”

Toby was the quiet one at work. He did his tasks silently and rarely got involved with the dramas that always seemed to occupy the other guys. Whenever he did give an opinion on some matter there were winks and nods and comments like, “So, this is what the professor thinks, guys!”

Toby didn’t mean to sound different from the others. He really did want to fit in.

“Sorry, but I got nothing more for you today. Thanks for the beers. See you tomorrow.” Toby walked out of the garage to the sound of three guys shouting, “Awwww!” and laughing loudly.

“OK, Toby!” Don yelled. “Maybe next time!”

Toby’s father was ill. It had been nearly two years since Mr. Pelgren began to display debilitating symptoms. He was devoid of most of his energy. He tried to navigate his thoughts through a sea of brain fog. And he was chronically short of breath.

“Hi Dad,” Toby called out as he entered the living room walking by the dusty old recliner where his father most often slumped.

“Hi son,” Mr. Pelgren said.

The sun was rising. The television was on. Domestic details were all in their place that morning, including poor old Mr. Pelgren in his chair.

“Do you want me to take you for a drive today after work, Dad?”

Mr. Pelgren angled his head ever so slightly in Toby’s direction. “Maybe, Toby. Let’s see how I’m doing then, OK?”

“Sure, Dad. We’ll see how you’re doing then.”

Mr. Pelgren returned to staring at the TV with his now typical blank and absent glare. Mr. Pelgren’s gaze told Toby that his father did not comprehend a thing going on with the television program. But Toby also picked up on the fact that his dad did not seemed distressed or in pain. He was just there. Not comatose, but also not animated. I guess this is a good thing, Toby thought.

“See you, Dad. Gotta go to work.”

“Bye, Toby.”

Mr. Pelgren knew he was dying. Every element of his reality was colored by that fact.

Toby liked his alone time. He did not exclaim to others that he liked to be by himself. Everyone who knew Toby simply knew he preferred to be solitary.

There were spaces in the woods near his home that he had discovered as a boy and which he returned to often even as a young adult. These were among his places of solitude where Toby went when he needed to feel more grounded.

That sense of being rooted, of being stable, was far too elusive for Toby. What with work at Don’s Landscaping and the constant pressures coming from his parents combining to drain him of not just his energy but of his soul, Toby desired respite. The woods gave him peace. The towering pines and oaks were his sentries and his angels protecting him and providing comfort.

During the week passed, Toby tried to get along with people as he did most times, but much of the effort left him more spent than usual. So on this day, Toby walked along his trail, one he had trod enough over years to establish as his path, ushering him to the cliff.

The cliff was a granite outcrop shaped perfectly by the glacier which had scraped and shaped this land ten-thousand years ago. It was a forty-foot drop from the precipice to its base, which is where Toby built a campfire site of ringed stone about fifteen years prior. Beside it he placed a log he had found, which held a divot just right for him to sit on.

Toby did not light a fire that day. Instead he sat still scrutinizing the beech and poplars and maples nearby. He was restless. He felt it and examined the feeling as if on high looking down on himself, detached and disembodied. Toby thought that if he could just see the true cause of his anxiety, then he could somehow effect his emotions — make them more positive, more enlightened.

Despite his mental exertions, his unpleasant and restive mood remained. So, Toby just let the rustling of the leaves by the gentle breeze and the undertone of bird song wash over him as he continued to stare at the beech and poplar and maple trees.

Nellie called his phone. “Hi Toby! I’m going over to West Leb for some shopping. Want to come with me? I can pick you up.”

“Thanks, Nellie. Yeah. God knows I need to get away.” Here Toby paused. “But Nellie. Don’t be going on about how I need to leave home and strike out on my own and be independent and all of that kind of shit. Can you not be doing that today?”

“Sure. OK. I promise,” Nellie chirped. “You know how I feel about it, but I won’t stress out your fragile mind this afternoon. I’ll be over in about twenty minutes, OK?”

“See you then,” Toby replied.

Toby had known Nellie since they had attended elementary school together. They had been friends ever since. Toby used to get teased by the other boys for having a girl as his best friend, but in his heart Toby could never understand what was wrong with that.

One line Toby and Nellie never crossed was to refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. Neither one of them ever pushed for that designation. They were simply happy to just be friends.

Nellie wanted to buy some clothes and other things that Toby did not pay much attention to. He wandered around the stores Nellie took him to looking at the merchandise with no particular interest in any of it. What caught his eye more was watching Nellie examining this and that as she determined which items to put into her shopping cart.

She has confidence, Toby thought. She doesn’t worry like I do.

Toby saw how Nellie’s countenance was genuine. Her appearance was relaxed. And the natural look on Nellie’s face settled into a slight smile even when there was nothing obvious to be grinning about.

Toby took comfort in observing these traits of Nellie’s. He was glad she had asked him to join her that afternoon. And she did not press him about how he needed to be more autonomous and separate himself from his family. Not once.

Toby could not shake the memory of what had happened back up at the hunting camp on Cooper Hill Road. He was passing the road’s entrance in his truck on the way to a job site. The incident had been four of five years before as best Toby could remember.

A group of fathers from the town, including his own, had taken their sons to do some bear hunting up at a camp some of the dads owned jointly. Toby did not want to hunt black bears, but his dad did, and Mr. Pelgren wanted Toby to join him.

One thing about the experience that began to grate on Toby’s nerves early on was when he observed a few of the men and lads baiting bears with old junk food from the town’s general store. It was stuff like stale Drakes Ring Dings and Devil Dogs and expired Hostess Twinkies. It seemed to Toby cheap and lazy and unfair to “hunt” bears that way.

Sure enough, Tim’s dad, Mr. Thurston, shot an adult black bear which sported a thin white crest on the side of its neck. He strung it up back at the camp for everyone to see. Mr. Thurston called for the boys to gather around, so he could demonstrate how to butcher the bear.

When time came around for Mr. Thurston to slit open the bear’s gut out fell bile-covered Drake’s Ring Dings, Devil Dogs, and Hostess Twinkies. Most of the junk food was still enclosed in its packaging.

All of the boys and some of the fathers laughed. Toby looked around him in disgust and his mind was suddenly transported to a state he rarely dwelt in.

“This isn’t funny!” Toby snapped. “This isn’t real hunting. It’s fucken’ gross!”

Everyone stared at Toby. Mr. Pelgren looked toward the ground.

“Hey, Pelgren,” Mr. Thurston called to Mr. Pelgren. “Your kid’s got a big mouth! If you don’t have the stomach for this Toby, look away.” The snide use of the word “stomach” made the guys laugh again. Mr. Pelgren looked up at his son with consternation, if not alarm. He knew this was not going to end well.

The next morning a note was found by Toby pinned to the cabin door of the room he was sharing with his father. It read, “Ur not wanted. Go hom.”

Toby and Mr. Pelgren left the hunting camp and the boys and their dads and went home. They were never invited back to the hunting camp.

It was one of those nights.

Toby laid awake in the dark of the bedroom he had had for as long as he could remember. The house had a deafening silence. Toby did not know what time it was. Three or four in the morning? He didn’t know and it didn’t matter. He was wide awake. A dream had awakened him. That he was sure of. But what the dream was about he did not know. He was left only with impressions and feelings, mere remnants, no clearly recalled details.

Toby propped himself up in bed and did not turn on the light deliberately so that he could more easily let his emotions flow through him. He had enough experience with his own style of emotional reflection to know to not fight his feelings or suppress them when they were potent enough to awaken him. His sentiments were guideposts, signs of changes to come.

That night he recognized anxiety, fear, and uncertainty. He also discerned anticipation — a type of expectancy which helped to smooth the rough edges of his more agitated feelings. These sensations were conspicuous enough, but for this night anyway, they did not carry the force to develop into some kind of actionable plans.

Instead, Toby sat in bed and in the dark suspended in what was like an ether consisting of part imagination and part objective reality. He communed with his demons and gave thanks to his angels while floating there. The wait until first light seemed to take forever. It often did.

As Mr. Pelgren declined, Mrs. Pelgren grew increasingly agitated. The combination made the Pelgren home insufferable. Toby knew what he could control and what he could not control. The circumstance he found his parents in he could not control. Realizing the lack of command he had gave him some degree of ease in an otherwise unbearable situation.

If Toby’s father understood or accepted his fate he did not let others, especially the members of his family, know about it. His energy and self-control lessened as his sullenness and despondency grew.

“How are you doing today, Dad?” was Toby’s typical line of greeting to start each day.

A grunt with flat affect was the usual reply.

“I’m sorry this is happening to you.”

“Yeah, well I’m sorry to.”

“Want to go for a ride today?”

“And have me shit up your truck seat again?”

“I’ll cover it proper this time.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

After a couple of minutes of silence except for the blaring television Toby asked, “I’m going to turn down the TV, alright Dad?”

“I don’t care.”

Toby lowered the volume. Mr. Pelgren stared at the television screen unmoved. The repeats of old shows from the seventies played on while Toby and his dad sat quietly. Toby felt trapped and sorry for his father and mother at the same time.

Mrs. Pelgren sat quietly by herself at the kitchen table gnawing on a fingernail and looking worried.

Loneliness was far from an all encompassing experience for Toby. He rarely felt lonesome. However, today was different. Toby wanted to be with Nellie. He wanted to be near her self-reliance and her serenity.

Toby texted her. -Hey, wass up?

-I’m trying to figure out this sewing machine.

-Sewing machine? What sewing machine?

-One my Grannie had.

-So, ur starting to sew?

-Yeah. Thinken about it.

-Since when?

-Since I decided to sew. -Did you text me for a reason?

-I want to hang out with you.

-OK. Come over. -I’m gonna stay with this machine though.

-OK. See ya soon.

By late that evening Nellie and Toby could stitch together two pieces of old fabric on Nellie’s Grannie’s sewing machine. They smiled at each other enjoying the thought that they had done something new together.

When Nellie hugged Toby goodnight at her kitchen door as he was leaving she kissed his left cheek. This was an unusual thing for Nellie to do. Toby liked it. A lot.

It was a Saturday morning in winter. The snowbanks on the side of Route 4A were still white and not yet showing the grime of late winter.

Toby was driving his truck, but he had no destination. This was a fantasy drive. That is what Toby called these drives when he just wanted to let his imagination expand unhindered. On that day, Toby’s mind was conjuring possible places he could be aiming for as destinations as he drove his truck.

He was envisioning places far away. Locations he saw on YouTube videos or on the several travel sites he liked to scan.

Toby first pretended to be going to Door County, Wisconsin. He remembered seeing a picture of a restored red pick-up truck parked against a blue painted barn with white trim. An apple tree was nearby. The picture made him feel peaceful. So he wanted to be in Door County.

From there he would drive north in Wisconsin and connect with U.S Route 2 heading west. He saw himself traveling across northern Minnesota trying to find the headwaters of the Mississippi River.

Toby’s next make-believe was of him feeling free and untethered driving mile after mile on Interstate 10 in Texas. He would explore the hill country west of San Antonio.

Finally, he pictured himself in Indiana parking his truck beside a cornfield just before its harvest. In his daydream he walked deep into the field of cornstalks, all of them taller than he was. He visualized becoming fearful that he would be lost amongst all that tall corn.

In the evening, he would feel content sitting alone in his motel room with his only task being to figure out where he was going to drive the next day.

I do not go out of my way to engage in political discourse with others as much as I used to when I was younger. This is especially true for people I do not know well. That said, my political radar is always up when interacting with people I have recently met by assessing their comments in an attempt to discern their political leanings. It’s a bad habit, perhaps, but that is the way it is with me. I like to size people up.

One such instance arose during the 2020 election season. A hard working builder, who was excellent at what he did and who I grew to respect, worked for us on a project we undertook for a couple of months. One day, he and I were chatting during one of his work breaks. I do not remember his exact words, but the clear message was that on the topic of Covid leadership, President Trump was doing a good job and he deserved to be reelected.

Any resistance to not respond dissolved in one, or maybe it was one and a half seconds. I retorted with something like, “The way I see it is that the guy was lucky to have been given about three years with blue skies and fair seas and no major crises to deal with. He gets his first major challenge and he clearly is blowing it.”

I was looked upon with a touch of seriousness and surprise. We quickly learned we were on opposite sides of America’s gaping political chasm. But all was cool. Neither of us was up for contentious verbal fisticuffs and so we moved on to other topics. However, he let his position rest with a parting comment. “Well, all I know is that I like my freedom.”

Freedom. Beside the right to live, I cannot think of a more commonly valued belief than personal freedom. The right of each individual to live as they choose to is powerfully cherished around the world. And here in the western democracies, it is one of the key driving forces in how we individually and collectively live our lives. I agree with my Trump-endorsing friend — I also like my freedom. A lot.

It becomes easy to conclude that a principle as venerated as freedom is must be unrestrained, fostered, and respected in an unlimited manner by society. If freedom is a good thing, then the more of it there is the better, right? Well, I am enough of a skeptic to think there are limits to virtually everything. If there are universal and supreme moral codes underpinning reality, as espoused by philosophers from ancient times to the present, then I think the number of such ideal forms must make a small list indeed. Beyond these divinely inspired universals it seems to me all other values derived by humans have limitations. Freedom is among them. What follows is my examination of the limits of freedom.

To begin, it is useful to define what I mean by freedom in the political and philosophical sense. Therefore, I define freedom thusly: Personal freedom or individual liberty is the right for each person to decide on their own the course they want to follow to live their lives free from intrusion or coercion by others, whether such constraint comes from government, groups, or individuals. 

I am trying to keep this definition simple and uncomplicated. I also want a working description which is unambiguous and one which I feel is generally agreed upon by most people. This interpretation meets these conditions, I think.

Assuming this definition of individual liberty contains wording commonly agreed to, the question then arises how such a mental construct was formulated. Has humankind always felt a yearning for freedom throughout recorded history or has this value evolved over more recent times? Also, what is at the core of people’s psychology that motivates so many to achieve lives characterized by personal liberty? Anyone reading these words will have lived their entire lives with an understanding, and probably an acceptance of freedom, similar to the way I am describing it. Such familiarity can make us think the concept of freedom as we now know it has always been around. But has it?

A useful exercise to better understand today’s views of freedom is to trace its historical underpinnings. A review of political anthropology yields one strikingly stark fact. Even among the oldest and smallest cultural bands of people there exists evidence of social control of individuals designed to mitigate person-to-person strife. Given the profound challenges of survival from prehistoric times on, cooperative behaviors were deemed necessary, if not crucial, to maintain continuity of the group and its individuals. Historically, group norms appear to hold more valuation than individual liberty. In fact, investigations of pre-historic peoples find these folk viewed families as the more basic human unit, not individuals.

In the history of western thought, we can find Plato expounding on the notion of justice, which it can now be said forms a foundation for the modern concept of freedom. As Plato was wont to do in his writings he presented dialogues, as they are known, in which philosophical instructional discourses are offered. A leading character in many of these dialogues is Socrates, who Plato accepted as a teacher and mentor. Socrates never wrote his teachings, but rather delivered them orally. Thanks to Plato, we know what Socrates taught.

In Plato’s best-known dialogue, The Republic, the theory of justice is raised. Plato, through his leading man Socrates, concludes that justice may be considered in two very different ways, one of higher value than the other. Hence, it is observed that human nature propels people to argue and occasionally fight for what is in their personal interests. This is fine until one is attacked by someone else pursuing their own interests. In other words, humans in their natural state are nothing more than a collection of self-interested units in perpetual competition for resources, which is it hoped, will satisfy their individual desires.

To resolve constant conflict among skirmishing individuals a collective agreement is made by all to live within a set of just rules, thereby reducing conflict and leveling the playing field for each engaging individual. Sounds fair, right? But Plato and Socrates go further to state justice should be more than practical good behavior. Living justly or fairly they claim will result in a person being happy and content, a worthy goal in and of itself. Although it could be said that before agreeing to participate in a just set of rules with their fellow man, the individual was more free to act, but also more at risk of force from others wanting what they had. Raw individual freedom meant living with increased risk of despair and even death.

Once we leave ancient Greece we find that for the next two thousand years or so people in the west largely lived under two forms of social rule, neither one of which valued justice or personal freedom much. Monarchies, a form of totalitarianism at the time, and serfdom were systems under which unequal class-based stratification of people was the norm. The 1% vs. the 99% economic structure we hear about today was commonplace for much of our history. It is hard to say any member of the 99% was very free when the majority of power and wealth resided with the 1%.

As the Renaissance matured into the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, new thinking emerged regarding the idea of individual rights. Philosophers who delved into early science began to view the world as mechanistic and ruled by fundamental laws of matter in motion. This Newtonian perspective set the stage for a reexamination of what made nature, and by extension, people tick. As heavenly bodies and objects here on earth are guided by natural laws, then too humans must be compelled and choregraphed to act as they do by predetermined principles.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) set the stage for viewing human behavior from this novel mechanistic position during this time. To understand Hobbes’ role in the formation of a right to individual liberty we can begin with his assessment of human nature. Note that Hobbes lived to see first hand the causes and consequences of the English Civil War during the 1640s. This monumental conflict pitted the supporters of the English monarchy, and their King Charles I, against the rising power of the English Parliament led by Oliver Cromwell. Eventually, the Parliamentarians defeated the Royalists establishing England as a republic. However, the fratricide which took place heavily influenced Hobbes’ writing of political theory.

Hobbes observed people similarly to Socrates and Plato in that he agreed they were essentially driven above all else by self-interests. He goes into great detail describing what he calls the State of Nature. Chiefly, Hobbes is saying the only natural authority among people is that of the parent-child relationship. Beyond this primary bond, everyone is in a scramble for getting what they want and avoiding what they do not want — a kind of law of the jungle.

The good news according to Hobbes, is humans proclivity to reason. By way of rational means people can agree to live together civilly. And civil order was a very big deal to Hobbes. Without it, people were little more than anarchical beasts. So given this reality, Hobbes promotes the first systematized Social Contract Theory. To form a civil society, people must first agree that giving up some degree of personal freedom is necessary so that all may thrive in life free of the fear of violent discord. Next, people must also consent to selecting a person or group of people with the authority necessary to enforce the social contract, i.e., a form of governance.

Where Thomas Hobbes loses many people is with his contention that the best type of social contract obliges people to obey the leadership of what calls a sovereign. What he means is a king or queen. Although not a strict Royalist during the Civil War — he did find merit in the Parliamentarians claim of representative government — he nevertheless placed significant importance in the capacity of a benevolent monarch who could best bring about law and order and tranquility to society. His Social Contract Theory was an attempt to forge a compromise between the two sides. Regardless, Hobbes’ aspiration was to encourage a socially civil arrangement among people, without which society would devolve into the primitive and hazardous State of Nature.

The notion of depicting a State of Nature of humankind, in other words social aggregates free of any external or internal government-like controls, continued to be the starting point for political theorists attempting to specify appropriate parameters of social control up to modern times. John Locke (1632-1704), another prominent English political philosopher and younger contemporary of Hobbes, adopted the Hobbesian approach of characterizing completely free and unconstrained people in a social context. However, Locke was less dire and pessimistic in his appraisal of human nature. Where Hobbes saw a dearth of moral temperance among people, Locke saw an opportunity for people to be naturally free and fulfilled.

John Locke recognized the individual freedom inherent in the State of Nature, but rather than being intimidated by its disruptive potential, Locke envisioned enormous benefit and possibility for people to live unrestricted lives of purpose. Locke’s relative optimism resulted from his belief that people were moral creatures and therefore capable of much more self-control than Hobbes gave them credit for. The basis for Locke’s proclaimed widespread morality was what he called the Law of Nature, which was given to all people by God. The divine Law of Nature dictates that humans not impair one another, but rather respect each person’s “life, health, liberty, and possessions”. Less government with its checks and regulations is necessary, because a moral population simply does not need management. Instead, they are kept in line by accepting God’s word.

Locke was not too Pollyannaish, however. Another component of the Law of Nature was that people could and should defend themselves from unscrupulous behavior, which Locke recognized did exist. Therefore, a degree of civil authority was warranted. Also, Locke revered the concept of property ownership. The image of a man communing with nature, by for example tilling a piece of land and producing food, was seen as a hallowed endeavor.

Locke began to speak of man as having rights — a radical idea for the times —  to live as he chose and to own what he acquired within moral reason and limits. Perhaps some readers will recognize the ethic of Thomas Jefferson in this description of John Locke. The American Declaration of Independence is a powerful reflection of Locke’s thought, and yes, Jefferson was indeed heartily inspired by him. So, where Hobbes advocates for a strong authoritarian sovereign to protect people’s lives, Locke’s vision of a social contract is in support of a minimalist government to protect people’s rights. Their core difference in defining social contracts and civil authority results from their extreme dissonance in defining human nature.

The next chapter of examining the transformation of social thinking with regards to liberty takes us to the reasoning of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Rousseau was a French intellectual, who became one of the pillars of the Enlightenment and a key provider of the rationale for the French Revolution of the 1780s and 1790s. He became enthralled with the investigation of the State of Nature, Social Contract Theory, and the concept of individual rights begun by Hobbes and Locke.

An interesting twist in our tale is the belief Rousseau held regarding the State of Nature. He contended that humankind prior to becoming civilized lived in a pure, natural, and idyllic state. Individuals were inherently free to live in harmony with nature and with each other. There was minimal strife and competition among people, due to their small numbers and the plenitude of nature. Rousseau claimed these early humans were kind and gentle and practiced caring for one another. This view is a polar opposite of Hobbes’ outlook toward human nature.

Once progress and civilization occurred in response to a growing populace and establishment of communities people’s lives became bifurcated into work and leisure times. A consequence of these changes was that life became easier due to innovations and the growth of specialty trades, however people began to compare themselves to one another leading to a proliferation of negative traits such as vanity, jealousy, shame, and loathing. In particular, Rousseau blames the establishment of private property as a monumental cause for man’s “fall from grace”. Note, the stark difference between this position and Locke’s concerning property ownership.

Rousseau saw the onset of private property as resulting in class distinctions. Either one owned property or one worked for someone who did. Wealth and power in time became concentrated among the property owners. Unsurprisingly, this was a situation property owners wanted to preserve. To do so, governments were established to make laws skewed toward the interests of the ownership class and away from the interests of those who worked for them. Rousseau recognized this state of affairs as indeed being a social contract, but an unjust one.

Realizing it was futile to imagine humans going back to the original State of Nature, Rousseau set out to envision a more equitable and humane social contract for the modern era. Beginning with his contention, “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains”, Rousseau suggests a social contract composition that essentially attempts to reconcile how people can live freely and together simultaneously. From the starting point of humans being free in their natural state, he opposes any notion of authority being legitimately derived from an entitled social class, such as the rich, and he vehemently rejects any conviction in a divine right of royalty to rule. Since we all start off life on earth free and equal, leadership which is needed to ensure the rights of people to live as freely and equally as possible, must arise from the consent of a free and equal community of people.

Rousseau therefore proposes the concept of a communal or general will derived from the input of all and which takes into consideration the interests of all groups and individuals in the population — in other words, direct democracy. To submit to a general will, individuals must renounce a degree of their distinctive and discreet freedom. Rousseau essentially tells us that not everyone can get all they want all of the time without taking into consideration the needs and wants of others. We are instead encouraged to submit to the conditions of a freely and equitably determined general will, including in the selection of authority.

Society is more than a collection of individual interests, Rousseau tells us. A synergy must be reached establishing a greater good for all persons to live as freely and fairly as possible. Achieving this state is more important than the interest of any one individual. Acceptance of this type of social contract best addresses the corruption which arose from our loss of the original State of Nature. If this requires that citizens be forced by law and tradition to conform to the parameters of the general will, then so be it. This is the Rousseau doctrine.

What Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau wrought is debated to this day. Their formation and refinements of Social Contract Theory has led in large part to the style of democratic governance practiced around much of the world today and which is under threat in some countries, including in the United States. More on that later.

To conclude our look at how Social Contract Theory has shaped individual liberty, I should mention one more political philosopher, John Rawls (1921-2002). After a long interlude of applying assessments of the State of Nature and Social Contract Theory to specify how societies should function ethically and legitimately, Rawls picked up the work of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau and utilized a novel approach. In his landmark work, A Theory of Justice published in 1971, Rawls conducts an abstract but useful thought experiment.

In place of the State of Nature, Rawls imagines what he calls an Original Position in which humankind, cloaked behind a “Veil of Ignorance”, determines what is the most just kind of society. Picture this. There is a diverse collection of people: women, men, all ages, all races, straight, gay, abled, disabled, rich, poor, etc. None of them interact with or even know about one another. They are not aware of human history with its prejudices, successes, or failures. Each individual knows only one thing, which is to settle rationally on the conditions or social contract necessary for what will be the most fair society possible for all of its inhabitants.

Rawls claims this imaginary planning group will naturally decide on two core principles. The first is that each and every individual in society is to have the most civil liberty or freedom as possible. No one would be more or less free than anyone else. The second principle recognizes the impracticality of thinking social and economic parity or equality will ever be fully achieved. Therefore, social and economic inequality can be considered just only if social and economic rewards are available and obtainable by each individual, whether or not each individual chooses to strive for them. In short, in a just society everyone is free to pursue their interests and values and no one is to be denied freedom of choice and opportunity.

I have chosen to examine the limits of freedom through the lens of Social Contract Theory because I find it the best way to track the history of thought and practice regarding humankind’s pursuit of the ultimate freedom each individual in a society can expect to express. I am not aware of such a concentrated philosophical and social attempt to address individual liberty elsewhere in the world.

So, what are we to make of all of this? To live freely will firstly be determined at the level of the individual. Each person will have their own interpretation of what freedom means and how much of it is desirable for their unique life circumstances. A fully functioning fair society must be able to accommodate this range of renditions — up to a point.

To identify where this point is located begins with a reading of human nature, not unlike what occurred with the philosophers mentioned above.  As cited in Hamilton/Madison’s Federalist Paper No. 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” I think it is fair to say, not all “men” are angels. Although some segment of our population is certainly comprised of wonderful souls traversing the expanse from being kind to Buddha-like, there is also unfortunately a significant number of greedy, self-centered, abrasive, and downright unpleasant people out there who would just as soon roll you over if it would be to their advantage. Maybe early humans were the caring and gentle creatures Rousseau characterized, but many sure are not now.

This unmistakable reality forces society into articulating limits to the behaviors demonstrated by individuals. One’s conscience, thoughts, and emotions have always been and hopefully always will be free of coercion and manipulation. But behavior is something else. Quite simply, if one’s freely chosen actions restrict the ability of another individual to act as they choose, then an imbalance has occurred. Whether this imbalance is justified, in other words fair, a reasonable consensus must be present. Typically, limitations to freedom occur for widely agreed upon reasons such as the need to preserve public order, national security, moral values, or the freedom of fellow citizens.

Defining freedom for a society, including its limitations, is where the device of a social contract can be very helpful. Codifying liberty, as can be done in the process of drafting, debating, and ratifying a constitution or also in judicial interpretations, can spell out the essence and parameters of socially acceptable free conduct. In the case of the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights and the remaining seventeen amendments to the Constitution that follow specifically define what it means to be free in the USA. In America and in many other parts of the world, freedom is expressed as highly precise and fundamental rights. Government exists in large part to protect these individual rights.

However, the concept of social contracts has come under criticism. A contract implies that at least two parties negotiated the terms and conditions of the contract. Regarding the U.S. Constitution, the bulk of the negotiating was done between 1787 and 1789 by the members of the Constitutional Convention. It is true, amendments to the Constitution require the input of Members of Congress and state governments over time, but largely the people living in America today did not negotiate or sign on to the social contract. We were literally born into its rules and values and raised to follow them.

Another criticism pertains to who sets the terms and conditions of the social contract. If the drafters of a constitutional-like document are those who control most of the society’s wealth and power, such that they write terms which protect their elite status rather than to universally disperse the benefits of rights across the entire population, then the social contract can rightly be deemed as unjust.

I would like to conclude this essay by mentioning the bizarre contortions freedom is undergoing in the American politics of 2022. If there was ever any doubt that former President Donald Trump had autocratic designs for himself and for his country, these were clearly dispelled on January 6, 2021 with the Capitol insurrection. We all witnessed a sitting U.S. president try to steal a legally and constitutionally conducted 2020 election in favor of himself. Trump told the country and his supporters that he was trying to save the country. In reality, he was trying to destroy democracy.

As I indicated at the start of this piece, Trump’s supporters claim they are lovers of personal freedom. I do not doubt that. The question becomes how best to ensure freedom’s continuance in America. Is it through autocracy or through democracy? Let us take a look at what autocracy is.

The opening line of the Wikipedia entry for autocracy reads: Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power over a state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject neither to external legal restraints nor to regularized mechanisms of popular control. I could offer other definitions, but this one sums it up quite well. In my judgment, and I am certainly not alone, this is what Donald Trump offers America.

Look at the current international order or at the world at any point in its history. Where is there evidence of freedom loving people living contently under autocratic rule? None can be found. Absolute power concentrated in the hands of one person is the antithesis of shared power, hence no liberty. Fair play requires each citizen, including and especially the president, to work for the betterment of the public good. A flourishing and prosperous citizenry demands independent and collective contributions from all within a free society, not the dictates of one person.

To jointly support individual liberty and Donald Trump, or any other autocrat, makes no sense. Americans must choose. They are either on Team Autocracy or Team Democracy. For the sake of freedom loving peoples everywhere, let us hope Americans — and all other lovers of liberty around the world — will choose wisely.

Provocations

All Drunks are skid row bums living in donated tents under bridges.

All Trump supporters are racist backwoods rednecks.

All Techies are self-obsessed nerds with no social skills.

All Lefties are self-righteous, insular, uncompromising prigs.

All Children are whiny, self-interested, unsophisticated brats.

All Pro-gun nuts are fearful, paranoid, faux courageous extremists.

All People of color are lazy and unreliable and always looking for a hand out.

All Whites are privileged, wealth hoarding, power hungry aristocratic wannabies.

All Christians are holier-than-though, intolerant, nationalist, white supremacists.

All Suburbanites are socialist sympathizing and corporate consuming phonies.

All Democrats are bleeding heart, atheistic, pie-in-the-sky spendthrifts.

All Republicans are cheap, selfish, cold-hearted, hidebound fuddy-duddies.

All Poets are naval gazing egotists who believe other people care what they think.

Soul Energy

My cursory study of

quantum mechanics

has hit a snag.

It seems to me

rightly or wrongly

that all matter is really

just energy.

All there is

is energy

behaving in different ways.

Energy behaves.

Now what? I ask.

Science is leaving me

stranded in a cul-de-sac.

Then I think, well,

what about

the energy which is

in all of us humans?

The energy giving us life.

The energy that existed

before we were born and

will exist after we die.

Soul energy.

Our soul is the eternal energy

expressing itself in each of us

individually.

Something to ponder for a while

I think.

Bread and Butter

He wore the same

baker whites as my father.

An old, kind, quiet man,

who took an interest in me.

I, a small boy.

He, a kitchen worker.

The slices of white bread

were toasted a light brown.

With the broad knife

he scooped a generous portion

of butter from the crock.

A quick spread, evenly distributed,

and placed before me.

The toast tasted delicious!

I am mystified

why such a memory

of a mundane moment

has stayed with me

for so very long.

It was nothing special,

just a warm, pleasant, and caring

experience.

That is all it was.

I guess, that is all it needed to be.

Where Is She?

It has been 36 years

since she implanted herself

outside of the uterus.

The growing union of cells

survived for some days and weeks.

How many is unknown.

Her destiny was to not be.

Her presence became a danger.

Her life force needed to be

snuffed out in order to

save her mother.

Her soul

as rich as anyone’s

needed to find a new

cluster of cells

in which to flourish.

I want to believe

she found it

and is living

a thriving life.

Excuse me

while I cry.

Mortality Dream

It happened again last night.

I awoke

gently

at about 3:00am.

I recognized the feeling.

I have felt it before.

More and more frequently

in recent months and years.

The dream that awakened me

has no memorable content

or occurrences.

Only a theme.

My life is coming to an end.

Not imminently,

or so I think

and hope.

But my advanced age,

my eventual demise,

occupies a more prominent

position in consciousness,

both when awake

and asleep.

I felt no fear.

Only sadness.

By 5:00am

I crawled back into bed.

She, in her sleep, reached over to

touch me.

At that moment

I felt blessed and

returned to sleep.

Angst

We begin with the angst of childhood

Being concerned about being loved.

Then comes the angst of adolescence

Do I have enough friends?

The angst of young adulthood is weightier still

I must measure up to what a normal adult is. I must.

Oh, the angst of middle age

So much to hold together — marriage, finances, work, kids!

Late career angst can also bite

Planning a well-earned retirement in Shangri-La requires a lot of fantasy.

To live long enough for post-employment angst

Making that fixed income last while sliding toward senility and decline.

And finally — the simple angst of end of life

Being concerned about being loved.

Prints in the Snow

The snowfall was heavy.

The cold was deep.

From the window I saw

the blanket of blanco

lay soft, firm, and virgin.

As days passed

the snow became speckled

with small disparate prints.

They would appear in

morning.

Made during the frigid

night.

Noticed by me throughout the

day.

Why, I wonder, are they expending energy

by moving about

on this patch of frozen landscape?

Who made them?

Squirrels, deer, fox,

a lone turkey separated from its rafter,

or the elusive fisher,

whose screams we have heard at night

like a lost freighted child calling out for help.

Protected and comfortable

in my woodstove-heated home

I try not to anthropomorphize

their plight.

But I do anyway.

God Will Save Me

(Remembrance of a story once told.)

Come away from the edge!

You could fall into the water!

Not to worry.

I am religious.

God will save me.

The boat lurched starboard and in he fell.

Here! Grab this life ring!

Not to worry.

I am religious.

God will save me.

A rescue boat appeared along side him.

We have come to save you!

Not to worry.

I am religious.

God will save me.

He went under.

Lungs filled with water.

He drowned.

At the Pearly Gates he approached God.

I have long worshipped you!

Why did you not save me?

God looked down upon him kindly.

I gave you ears for listening to others.

I gave you fingers for grasping onto helping hands.

I gave you a mind for reasoning.

The question should be,

Why did you not use your God-given gifts?

Uppers and Downers

Homeostasis is so

elusive.

Like a statistical norm it

exists in ether

not in our real lives.

Energy can be difficult

to direct.

Its simple options are

to go up or

to go down.

Like a constant

calibration.

Turn energy up or

turn energy down.

This way or that way.

Reach for the upper

to be productive

to feel exuberance

to practice acuteness

to enjoy wakefulness.

Reach for the downer

to relax

to be reflective

to go adrift

to smell life.

Equilibrium,

Sustainability,

Balance,

Perseverance,

Homeostasis,

is the ultimate goal.

The Old Family Photos

With hesitant

but expectant

fingers

he opens the old photo

albums.

To even hold

these collections

is stepping back

to distant times

long gone,

but residing still

in presents past.

His emotions are

mixed.

Warmth, sadness, and

subdued happiness.

A stark reminder

of gifts he had

been given

and squandered

by being less

than he should

have been.

Love and regret,

grateful and apologetic.

Reminded of Thoreau,

“The mass of men live lives

of quiet desperation.”

Unfortunately,

he joined the family

of these men.

Such a turn of events

for a rich life

endowed with beautiful

children and wife.

A seminal event in the development of machine learning occurred over a two-month period during the summer of 1956—about a half-hour drive from where I am now writing—at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The year before, an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth, John McCarthy, generated the idea of compiling an eclectic group of talent who were to be tasked with conducting an original type of prognostication in an area so new that he needed a fresh term to describe it. Professor McCarthy coined a label for his proposed conference’s topic…Artificial Intelligence.

Although a decade before Gordon E. Moore of Intel prophetically surmised the doubling of transistors on a given unit of space could occur every two years, known over the years as Moore’s Law, by the 1950s it was becoming clear that the rate of electronic functionality and efficiency was improving exponentially. Given this background, John McCarthy set out to investigate the potential of this trend by bringing together an interdisciplinary potpourri of researchers from fields as diverse as cognitive science, electrical engineering, communications, neuroscience, information theory, psychology, mathematics, and computer science. Their mission for what became the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence can best be summarized by the following sentence extracted from Professor McCarthy’s 1955 conference funding proposal: “The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.” Such was the launch of one of the most revolutionary movements of our time.

Artificial Intelligence, or AI as it has become commonly known, is simply intelligence displayed by machines. Beyond this terse definition nothing about AI is simple. Nor is it docile. AI is already shaping our world in ways never before seen. We now live with tools such as search engines, robotic automation, virtual product recommendations, and data-driven medical diagnostics to name just a few of the innovations unheard of by most people only a generation or two ago. And on the horizon? Self-driving cars, self-learning cybersecurity systems, robotic assistants for the elderly, and tailored genomic medicines merely begin the dazzling list of inventions coming our way. AI has already demonstrated potential for disrupting and altering the way we live our lives and we are just getting started.

The volatile and variable nature of AI agency prompts me to examine this phenomenon in some detail and with some urgency. At present, AI portends to be either a source of life enhancing opportunities or a basis for grievous intrusions and dislocations that could threaten our way of life. Its strength may deliver possibilities or burdens. Given this potency it is incumbent upon us to fully and intentionally participate in examining, monitoring, and directing the course of AI development. It’s not as if this phenomenon is some act of God beyond our control. It is manmade. Therefore, we need to ask ourselves, are we going to steer AI advancement or is AI going to drive us?

I approach this inquiry as a lay person. I have no significant education or experience in subject matter related to AI or machine learning, including mathematics, computer science, robotics, cognitive modeling, information theory, data science, or any of the other sub-disciplines that go into the structure of AI. I am just a John Q. Citizen who is interested in technological change and what adaptations it can bring to individuals and society. Counter-intuitively, my non-technical background highly qualifies me to look into the possible ramifications of AI. And I should not be alone in doing so. When science becomes so abstract that average people simply resign themselves to letting the smarty-pants of the world make the profound decisions of how we are to live our lives, then we have a problem. I think it best to welcome the benefits AI can bring to us, while maintaining skepticism and a wary eye about its possible perils.

It is tempting to think that AI will display its power largely as a source of new products and services for the universe of consumers always eager to be swept away by the newest shiny object. Technological innovations often reveal new and improved ways of completing common tasks. Undoubtedly, expanded capacities will emerge allowing consumers to benefit from a myriad of novel ways to perform daily life functions. However, AI will manifest itself broadly by transforming employment and by extension how we live our day-to-day lives. This historic interchange between employment and how we structure our lives appears to be on the verge of a mammoth AI metamorphosis.

For better and for worse we have been at a similar economic and social crossroads before. It may be useful to consider what transformations the last great such revolution yielded as we ponder how to best be prepared for the AI insurgency. Two hallmarks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe were the rise of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. The Scientific Revolution ushered in new ways of comprehending the essence of natural materials and phenomena, which resulted from a newly developed thought process, inductive reasoning, while the Enlightenment encompassed a multitude of ideas leading to individual empowerment and the pursuit of just government. Together the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment set the stage for the Industrial Revolution.

Much of the world we know is the way it is because of the Industrial Revolution. Starting in England, where modern science largely took hold, and spreading quickly to many places across the globe, economies transitioned from homebased craft and agrarian work to factory-based machine production. This conversion led to many benefits such as more affordable and plentiful life enhancing goods and services, effective means of transportation, labor saving devices, and medical advances. For many non-aristocrats, wealth generation became possible and the rise in specialty professions developed. But these gains came with costs. The rapid migration of rural folk into industrialized cities, which were ill equipped to handle the influx, created inadequate, overcrowded, and disease-ridden housing. Increases in pollution, environmental degradation, and dangerous working conditions were also consequences. The lesson we can take from the historical shift of muscle to machine is that great advantages can and probably will come from fundamental economic pattern volatility, but these boons have great potential for trailing along a load of detriments and handicaps.

The Industrial Revolution impacted whole societies by changing how people lived. It ushered in an era of mass production and mass consumerism. Commensurate with this shift arose large corporate businesses, labor unions, immigration, government regulation, rural vs. urban issues, broad-based taxing, higher education, and improved widespread communications. Scientific progress introduced professional expertise in the form of rational problem solvers with job titles such as engineer, manager, and accountant.

The new AI revolution will likely rock the world similarly. When considering the scope and scale of such monumental change it can seem like it is beyond being managed. It can appear like a runaway train. Therefore, it may be helpful to view this latest grand social transition as primarily an economic one. Economics implies that what is underway is determined by people. Economics is a social science that simply cares about the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics is not controlled by external forces of nature or acts of God. We are not trying to control a competing power. Rather we are trying to control ourselves. Choice and decision making among people is involved in executing economics and it should also be entailed in how we face the rollout of AI.

Fortunately, in regards to human agency and control, a crucial difference between the economics of the AI revolution versus the Industrial Revolution involves centralization or incorporation. The Industrial Revolution engendered a corporate approach to group organization. Large collections of people amassed with a common purpose and legal authority to execute objectives, such as transacting business under a single name. Institutionalization became a widespread structuring principle across business, government, and society in general. People found that in order to benefit from this economic order they had to adopt and adjust to these institutional systems, including their rules, their schedules, and their cultures. Depersonalization and objectification ensued.

However, the novel technology and information world order we are now experiencing is by nature more networked and distributed and less concentrated. Therefore, it should be possible for individuals to exercise more control over their engagements, even if this means diluting somewhat the power of institutions. New grassroots organizing constructs based on ad hoc resiliency that combine global talent as needed has empowerment potential for people. Fitting AI into this type of schema, whereby individuals collaborate with both distributed talent and AI to realize goals is a possibility. To the extent AI can be harnessed in a blended sharing of ideas and solutions the more command people have over the direction of the future. Let’s utilize AI to help invent our tomorrow.

It may be helpful to envision exactly what kind of tomorrow we wish to have for ourselves. Clarifying an image of an optimal future allows us to strategically orient our resources, such as AI, to realize a destiny of our own intentional making. And as I suggest, AI can be one of our key resources or it could be a serious impediment.

Cultivating a positive collective future begins of course with projecting what is best for each individual. A reasonable contention is that the greater the number of happy or content individuals present in society, then the more satisfied the society will be as a whole. Achieving this state is really very non-technical. Technology alone is not necessary for individuals to be grateful for what they have, devoted to family and positive friends, having an optimistic demeanor, living in the present, and feeling dignified and purposeful. 

In addition to these very important psychological conditions we can include an economic perspective to round out our ideal vision of the future. Economics, more than psychology, can be shaped and influenced by institutional and governmental policy initiatives. The resulting economic model of exemplary standards will need metrics utilized to determine if desired goals are being achieved. To be comprehensive, a blend of quantitative and qualitative assessments need to be applied.

To start, let’s not rely too much on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is a monetary appraisal of the market value of all goods and services produced over a period of time. GDP has been widely accepted as a broad metric of the national economy for decades and by inference how well people are doing. High GDP rankings correlate with high growth economies, which traditionally is considered a good thing. Aside from the obvious problem of trying to distill as complex an edifice as a national economy to a single number, GDP is credited with encouraging a style of economic growth that manifests as resource depletion and pollution growth. In addition, for an economy with significant inequality, such as America’s, not everyone experiences GDP advantages evenly.

Zoë Baird, president of the Markle Foundation, is not alone in finding fault with GDP as an adequate measure of how Americans feel about the health of their economy, and by extension, their own lives. Rather, she proposes a more inclusive set of metrics, which highlight historic economic afflictions and begins to shape a more affirmative direction. They include evaluations of public sentiments, amounts of job creation, quantities of new businesses, indications of growing median income, signs of increased worker protections and training opportunities, and growing numbers of young workers. In short, if evidence of enhanced economic opportunity for all citizens to pursue high quality and secure work at good wages can be established, then we have at the very least constituted a foundation for widespread prosperity and happiness.

Staying with this theme of envisioning the general public’s best interests through economics we can note other useful perspectives. Daron Acemoglu of MIT points out that the greatest driver of shared prosperity are good jobs, i.e. widely available secure jobs with high wages. News flash, huh? When such employment opportunities occur within a milieu of rising productivity, persistent job formation, and equitable gains, then there is less social division and more sense of community. (As an aside for any Socialist leaning readers, Acemoglu sees proliferation of good jobs as a far more effective and preferable model than a shared prosperity paradigm of redistribution alone.)

Further public interest considerations involve democratic governance that takes into account the dignity of all citizens, prudent business regulation, worker rights protections, easily accessible high quality workplace education opportunities, and community development.

Let us now take a look at how AI is contributing to the realization of a positive future that includes the features just described. To date the record is spotty at best. The most significant concern is its inclination to enable entities to amass information and wealth. If left unchecked, this consolidation threatens to exacerbate wealth inequality among segments of the population, including among nations. Skills which benefit the AI industry will be favored with a corresponding deemphasis on skills which do not, leaving vast numbers of redundant workers, lower wages, and a decline in the tax base. A shift toward monopolistic behaviors have always occurred when a new game-changing technology has been introduced, whether railroads, oil production, telecommunications, etc. and there is no reason to think it will not happen again.

Particularly worrisome in these early days of AI are the directions of its deployment. Much of AI is targeted toward the automation of functions, the collection of data, and the conduction of surveillance. The loss of jobs occurring simultaneously with governments and business acquiring ever more quantities of our personal data threatens to disrupt social order and the future of democracy.

AI is being empowered to make decisions and to make “higher quality” decisions it needs to process ever more data. Algorithms are sequenced sets of instructions that guide AI in its decision making. Initially these are written by human programmers. Any biases which a programmer possesses can and does find it way into the algorithmic design. This can be apparent in the data selected for analysis by the algorithm. When AI decision making is scaled to impact large numbers of people these biases are amplified to a significant extent, thereby instituting discriminatory practices to a degree that can be hard to unwind.

AI is likely to boost profits for those entities controlling its mobilization. According to a McKinsey report, Alphabet (Google), Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Ali Baba, and Baidu control most of worldwide AI research expenditures. Erik Brynjolfsson, professor at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, points out that when technology replaces human labor wages decline and wealth concentrates. Job disappearance is not just a statistic. When people lose self-authority and motivation much more than just a job is lost. Are we to believe these mega-corporations are concerned about the rights and welfare of low-wage and minority workers, the work strain put on those working 70-hour weeks, or the social consequences of what they are unleashing? Perhaps, but I’m not entirely content on thinking so.

Our world is growing increasingly complex. The population is escalating and with it growing numbers of problems, more initiatives, expanding interactions, and multiplying challenges. The need for enhanced iterations of cognitive processing is upon us to address this intensification. The late Stanford University philosopher Kenneth Taylor referred to the overall cognitive load and the cognitive networks required to handle it. He saw cognitive networks as divided between humans and AI. Taylor’s anticipation was that the enormous degree of necessary cognitive labor will be tasked more heavily toward AI over time, simply because AI will be more efficient at manipulating this expansive load. If decisions require answers best made through coordination of vast amounts of information, then the machines will always be better than the humans. Therefore, it is incumbent on the humans to be sure cognitive networks are governed to distribute cognitive processing and decision making tasks such that humans remain a relevant part of the mix. Human workers need to insist they be targeted to resolve those issues for which humans are better qualified than machines.

Citizenry does not as a rule play a science oversight role. The closest we come is when we sit back and wait for science to send us new technologies which we either approve of or reject with our wallets. To think of ordinary citizens as overtly directing the progress of science seems almost ridiculous. But with regards to AI, this is what needs to happen. Concentrating vast power to a technology with so many inherent risks should not be an acceptable state of affairs. The people, the body politic, the proletariat must monitor, and when necessary, sway the development and deployment of AI such that the greatest good is realized by the greatest number of people.

To take on a citizen surveillance role begins with an agreed upon code of ethics. This is where we start becoming activists. Debate about what an AI ethic should look like will be a healthy exercise for society. Guidance on this issue can come from the work of Annette Zimmerman, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of York and an expert in understanding both the technology supporting AI and the social implications of such technologies. She encourages us to consider simple and common sense issues and ask key questions when thinking about AI. For example, just because a technology can be made, should it be made? Are the issues AI is made to address worth addressing? What is the AI’s objective? What is the likely effect of AI involvement? Might negative, unjust, or harmful consequences possibly result because of AI?

We don’t ask enough of these questions. Why don’t we? Zimmerman offers several reasons. Government has not yet been urged by voters to impose stringent regulations on AI developers. The right of AI businesses to make a profit supersedes prescribing any kind of watchdog at present. Furthermore, techno-optimists are encouraged to see AI as finally reaching an inflection point where its growth is becoming exponential. Also, an attitude exists wherein the public feels that high-end information technology is somehow sacrosanct and should be left to do its thing. Together, these conditions create social passivity just at a time when our guard should be up.

When looking at AI the core decision to be made might be, are the reasons for constructing an AI tool and continually improving it justified or should it just not be built at all. In short, is the proposed AI fair? As Rachel Thomas of the Center for Applied Data Ethics at the University of San Francisco points out, the established pattern for AI progress is too centralized among system designers and operators. As a preferred alternative, Thomas proposes that AI evolution be more democratic and participatory among end users and others impacted by AI. As we are seeing, a key component of AI ethics involves ordinary people being actively engaged and persuasive with both the corporate powerful and the individual AI design talent.

At Dartmouth College in 1956, John McCarthy and his cohorts saw the potential for every aspect of human intelligence as capable of machine simulation. Where this has gone over the past sixty-five years is that machine intelligence is focused almost exclusively on what Kenneth Taylor calls AI-as-engineering — deep learning machines that process Big Data looking for patterns from which to make predictions. This is but one slice of intelligence, but the one which at present is the most profitable, hence the most common in the AI industry.

Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. It will not and should not be eradicated. Great innovations will come from AI, leading to improved lives worldwide in ways that are just now being imagined. Progress which positively influences the greatest number of people possible should be welcomed, whether it originates with AI or not. However, we should never lose sight of the aims being devised for the use of AI’s power. We should be able to manage disruptions to our way of life. But degeneration should not be tolerated. Democracy, our glorious experiment in self-government, sanctions us to control the levers of power, including when necessary power in business. The time to do so is now.

Eyes flicker open. Another day dawns. The window reveals the morning sun breaking through what remains of the rain clouds. They have dominated the skies over the past few dreary days. Hope and possibility again seem likely. That familiar spark of energy is again kindled. My mind adjusts by reviewing and making plans with renewed enthusiasm and vigor. It is what gets me to stand up, stretch, and step forward.

This cycle has repeated itself countless times. It has led to much productivity and a feeling of purpose, in large part defining who I am. But today is different. This time the spirit is somewhat muted. A recognition sets in leaving me feeling that this routine has become repetitive and therefore incomplete. There is an urge to make a change—to add value and progress to a life that in many ways has atrophied. I determine to go through the day’s activities, but decide to let run in the background of my mind a self-dialogue and reflection to put meaning to this morning’s elusive sense of scarcity. Today is a day for reflection and growth. I can feel it.

There is an inner drive, a potentiality that propels us to mature, no matter what our age. This force, sometimes referred to as conscience, is our integrity speaking to us. It prods, coaxes, and ultimately compels us to be more than we are. In my personal case, I know I have had ethical lapses, which have been profoundly hurtful to those I love. My awareness of this will not let me forget. When in despair, hope is needed. There is no time better than the present to make good.

Often, we choose to be too busy to listen to our inner voice. Living in a patterned and predictable manner is easier than to change. Change is chilling. Transformation is unstable. However, despite the insecurity of mental and behavioral shifting there comes a time when one just has to face a simple, but profound life truth. Evolution and self-improvement are inherent to who we are. And life becomes richer when we welcome this elementary precept.

Life enhancement and fulfillment is congruent with virtuous living, which is the topic I would like to explore in this essay. As you will see I dig into both personal reflection and some western philosophical thought for direction and guidance in examining this topic.

We all got the message as youngsters to be good. To be good was our first lesson in assimilation to society via our families. Being good and “following the rules” meant we would be more liked, have more friends, get in less trouble, increase our chance of getting into heaven after we die, and so on. The message to be good was most often delivered in a social context, as in our goodness was measured against how good others were. We were either as good as, better than, or worse than our siblings, neighbors, classmates, etc. Being good was meant to please an extensive cast of characters ranging from our parents to God. Rarely however in my youthful experience was being good taught to me as a virtue intended for my own personal edification.

This imperfect concept of goodness from our childhood is played out in our adult lives. It leaves ethical behavior, as important as it is, limited for many to merely a set of regulations and requirements guiding our interactions with each other. The moral precepts underpinning ethics become reduced to standards gleaned from sacred texts designed to bind society into some sort of manageable order. At some fundamental point adopting a virtuous or good life has to be what we do for ourselves, each of us individually, for the simple reason that being good is exalting and noble. We glorify ourselves not merely to bolster our fragile egos, but rather to realize the potential available for us all to live what the ancient Greek philosophers referred to as the eudemonic life—a flourishing life worth living.

I have come to perceive that good is much more than a commonly used adjective, as in the opposite of bad or how we feel at a given time. My current awareness of good as a concept carrying both significant weight and having a transcendent interpretation has been a long time in coming. In short, what I am now beginning to see is that there is good and then there is The Good.

An examination of Plato’s (~423 BCE–~348 BCE) landmark work in the Theory of Forms reveals how an early conception of The Good arose. Developed during the third and fourth centuries BCE, Plato considered the notion that the wide range of physical objects which we observe and comprehend in the world are derivatives of eternal, stable, and universal concepts, which became known as Forms. The Forms are the essences of all matter, substances, common objects, and even human traits, collectively known in this theory as Particulars, which we come to know through our senses and experiences.  For example, the Form or essence of a particular aging and changing dog would be its Dogness, the Form of a particular legal trial with its outcome of innocence or guilt is Justice, and the Form of a lovely work of art would be Beauty. Forms are constant. Particulars are temporal.

Forms have been described by various philosophers as “unqualified perfection”, “real entities of an immaterial sort”, “an objective blueprint of perfection”, “essential natures”, and “the archetypal ideal”. However over time, Plato began to speculate that there must be a relationship among all of these disparate Forms, one which played a unifying function. In his work The Republic, Plato reveals his presumption by introducing the existence of a Form of the Good—a kind of Form of Forms. The Form of the Good was seen as superior to and the source of all other Forms. What we see here is that Plato came to regard an all-encompassing uncorrupted order to the cosmos with morals and virtues as having ascendant qualities best captured in the Form of the Good. It is also not difficult to see how this Platonic vision of the Form of the Good, eventually known simply as The Good, morphed into our current understanding and widespread acceptance of God.

The ancient Greeks began the tradition of constructing a metaphysics of western thought that continues to this day. The prominent philosophers of this time like Plato came to realize there was a central orderliness to the universe. It naturally followed to them that this order was based in propriety and goodness. An organic optimism and positivity about the very nature of the universe has been a fundamental legacy of this philosophical history. To the extent humankind has thrived over the millennia is in large part attributable to this preeminent belief.

Now, a crucial criticism of Plato’s Theory of Forms is not unlike the common charge leveled against a belief in God. If the universe is supported by a core consisting of The Good or God, then what explains evil? Perhaps, The Good or God is not so omnipotent after all given the existence of wickedness. Plato saw two possible explanations for this. One, is that there may be a dualism of orders in the universe, one of goodness and one of evil. However, the more plausible reason for immorality may be due to a privation or lack of goodness in some situations. For example, there is not an ideal or Form of criminality. Crime exists because of a deprivation of goodness in the criminal. In either case, good needs to be summoned or made intentional in order for it to be expressed. Virtue requires effort.

“Life is Good” is a popular contemporary proverb, which may be just a cliché for some, but for others these three unpretentious words zero in on why we bother to choose virtuous living. If we accept that the ordered universe is rooted in essential goodness, then aligning our lives with the righteous nucleus of the universe should be the principled way to act, if we so elect.

Good intentions to live a more eudemonic life are one thing. Executing them is something else. One can decide the time has come in their life to act more virtuously, but determining the best means for realizing such a transition can be very difficult without identifying a clear and unambiguous plan. Again, I call on the philosophical history of western thought for some direction and this time look to Plato’s student, Aristotle.

Aristotle (384 BCE–322 BCE) developed a rich and complex system of philosophical thought covering many areas, including science, government, economics, linguistics, aesthetics, and ethics. For purposes of this essay it is worth noting one of his memorable utilitarian concepts known as the Golden Mean. Aristotle wanted to support people on their journey to becoming virtuous. Foundationally, he claimed that developing virtuous or moral character was more important than practice of any rehearsed set of behaviors or completion of obligatory duties with an expectation of positive consequences. Rather, when faced with a decision about how to proceed with a behavior or thought, virtuous character is cultivated by applying reason to identify the middle ground or mean between two extreme options which are seen as vices.

Aristotle urged us to reason that the extremes in decision making are vices because moral determination is most often bounded by excess and deficiency. To illustrate, a reasonable response to feeling angry is an honorable restraint between fury and anxiety; a morally appropriate encounter with an attractive person would be between lasciviousness and sheepishness; and noble conflict resolution would be the equilibrium between domination and impotence. Ethics is rarely clear-cut or precise. There is no statistical mean. It requires right intent and intellectual reasoning to find that moderate sweet spot. The more practice we have establishing the proper weight between extremes the more proficient we become in producing virtuous actions.

In addition to the counsel provided by Aristotle we can also turn to the Stoics for practical assistance in living virtuously. Stoicism was a school of Greek philosophy constituted during the third century BCE. Its teachings carried into the Roman empire until the emergence of Christianity suppressed it. Interestingly, Stoicism is undergoing a revival in the 21st century western world where it is viewed as an accessible means for finding meaning and purpose in our complex world.

The concrete practicality of Stoicism in terms of learning to live the virtuous life rests on what is known as the Four Cardinal Virtues. As Massimo Pigliucci describes them in his 2017 book How To Be A Stoic they are courage, temperance, justice, and practical wisdom or prudence. All religious or quasi-religious traditions quantify their tenets in sacred listings of one sort or another. The Four Cardinal Virtues codified by the Stoics are an encapsulation of the character formation beliefs developed by the ancient Greeks. The simplicity and elegance of these virtues makes them very attainable for the average person who need not engage in any extensive or esoteric training.

Applying the Stoic’s Four Cardinal Virtues in tandem with Aristotle’s Golden Mean provides the person inclined toward an examined life with a method and resource for strengthening character. This process is likely to cover many of life’s moral predicaments. The approach can be summarized thusly:

• When life calls for courageous acts to be performed, establishing a right balance between foolhardiness and cowardice is the moral position to take.
• When life calls for just acts to be performed, establishing a right balance between authoritarianism and leniency is the moral position to take.
• When life calls for temperate acts to be performed, establishing a right balance between profligacy and asceticism is the moral position to take.
• When life calls for wise acts to be performed, establishing the right balance between bombast and ignorance is the moral decision to take.

The reader may note that these illustrations are behavioral in nature. This is deliberate. In my judgment, an effective means to reform one’s thoughts and enrich one’s emotions is to advance one’s behavior. Yes, conduct can be compelled by thinking, which is prodded by emotion. It often is. However, I contend the reverse can work as well. Mastering behavior can be the gateway to principled thoughts and a feeling of contentment. In the development of virtuous character and ethical comportment, focusing on how we actually operate can be key.

Today I awaken with hope and confidence. Atonement motivates me as does the realization my continued growth best sustains my unavoidable aging. I am encouraged that an emerging ethical nature calls for my daily engagement. There is solace in relying on an effective paradigm and structure to make this effort self-supportive and meaningful.  When challenges arise, as they inevitably do, I can identify what virtue is called for to address it, whether it be courage, temperament, wisdom, or justice. By resolving which right action to take after an assessment of the extremes I can take another step forward toward better character. Another purposeful day to be gratefully alive dawns brightly.

The 2020 election is finally over. The feeble claims of election fraud by the Republicans have been shunted to the background of most Americans’ minds, at least for now. For most, getting past a year of Covid deaths, infections, and restrictions to an eagerly anticipated vaccinated future of health and socialization is looking to be a much more appealing topic. But of course with me politics never really takes much of a break, so now seems like a good time to assess the current condition and purpose of the Democratic Party.  My main interest today is in offering my take concerning the principal priorities and direction of the party in 2021 and going forward.

I have been a registered Democrat since 1972, but really a party “member” since childhood. Growing up among Irish Roman Catholics in Massachusetts during the 1960s can do that to a person. Therefore, to greater and lesser degrees over the years I have been keenly interested in what the party has stood for. Although my party affiliation was never in serious doubt, I nevertheless persist in being drawn to the party to define and occasionally question its influence on my ideological values. Being able to think more independently these days has not really changed my desire to still gauge the party’s principles and positions to see how I align, or not, with them. What follows are my thoughts about the Democratic Party at the start of the Biden/Harris era and what I think the mission of the party should be over the next several years.

Since at least the turn of the last century, if not earlier, Democrats have branded themselves as the “People’s Party”. This calls attention to the long-standing bifurcations of the ruling class and the working class, the wealthy class and the middle class, the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the poor. The Democrats have traditionally thrown their lot in with the cohort who directly operate machines, drive buses, teach children, clean hotel rooms, stock shelves, etc. You get the picture. This has always been a large part of the American electorate. They need representation. Democrats make sure they fit the bill. Workers and their families are the sine qua non of the Democratic Party.

However, there has been an obvious, dramatic, and troubling shift occurring in recent years for this core constituency of the Democrats. Many of the working class find Trump and his brand of in-your-face, authoritarian, tear-down-the-institutions style of politics preferable over traditional legislating as a means of achieving their political aims. Given the choice of intelligent, prudent, democratic give and take, which requires not just staking out a position, but compromise with those of differing persuasions in order to gain as much political benefit as possible, much of the working class has decided hate, nihilism, and rejection of America as we’ve known it is preferred.

I have to say, my initial reaction to this trend is disgust with these people. Although the domestic terrorists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 may not be completely representative of the Trump voter writ large, I think it is fair to say they exemplify where the energy of Trumpism can be found. And it is deplorable.

Now here is the emotional me speaking. Violence, belief in lies, repudiation of democracy, and adoration of such a flawed man as Trump are negative traits no matter how you slice them. There are no two sides to this story. People such as those who conducted the insurrection don’t need extra time to be heard or more “fair” media coverage or their own unregulated social media. Their tactics are unsupportable, illegitimate, and criminal. It seems just to me that any of them who stepped onto the Capitol grounds beyond the original police line and especially those who entered the building should be tried and if found guilty in a valid court of law be incarcerated. Lock them up!

After a deep exhalation and counting to ten please allow me to go on. Again, I do not believe all working class Americans have become as despicable as the ones who raided the Capitol on January 6, but their clown did get 74 million votes in the 2020 election. That is a lot! There are clearly many who thought Trump deserved a second term as president. Some of this I understand. Sure, some if not many of those votes are from lifelong Republicans who would vote for any candidate with an “R” after their name. There are those who probably liked his tax cutting, conservative judicial appointments, tough stance with China, and oversight of the good pre-Covid economy, but chose to hold their noses and vote for him anyway despite his boorishness. Of course, it is also understandable that some of Trump’s votes were from citizens who distrust liberalism, “wokeness”, and profligate fiscal spending. As hard as it is, I can accept these voter rationales. I may not like them, but I get not everyone is going to agree with my political take on things.

Nevertheless, it is jarring and sad that the very cohort of workers I felt in support of for basically my whole adult life I now view with suspicion. Beyond the principled conservatives and lifelong Republicans, who I can understand up to a point, there are too many Americans, quite a few from the working class, who enthusiastically support Trumpism. At this point in my political journey I have great difficulty countenancing their position. It is hard to see they are worthy of an effort to “reach across the aisle”. They are akin to enemies of the republic. I can tolerate a lot, but I do not see how I can put up with these self-righteous, hate-filled, conspiracy-addled threats to our 245-year old country.

I have no trouble saying Democrats should go forward clearly knowing that there is this segment of the population, which may be beyond reach, whether they’re from the working class or not. As a party we should not feel compelled to expend much time and energy trying to win them over. Sorry, but folks who believe Democrats are run by a pedophile ring who drink the blood of children are simply too tainted to bother with.

That said, there are some inconvenient truths in need of reconciliation by Democrats—and myself. Trumpists are Americans too. There is a wide segment of our citizenry who feel left out, shunted aside, marginalized, degraded and demeaned, and unheard by the elites of this country. Democrats have to ask themselves why this is. Conventional theories point to feelings of deprivation brought on by globalization, panic among whites who see themselves losing historic levels of power and influence, inconsolable gaps between the lives of rural and urban Americans, and wealth flowing to the more educated, all combined with a show of little respect for traditional hands-on work. And all of these grievances get juiced by social media. Democrats may not be entirely sympathetic about these Trumpian triggers, but we have to recognize that they are significantly driving the opposition. It is wise to know what gets your challenger out of bed in the morning.

Democrats have a tendency to over-categorize the American population. The party tries to assess the state of the nation by examining the plights, conditions, and issues of a multitude of core and peripheral demographic groups. This may seem like a reasonable and systemic approach for understanding the citizenry, but unfortunately, such a reductionist process tends to result in a perspective that is too meticulous, painstaking, and provincial. Democrats rightly engender the criticism of engaging too much in identity politics. Electorally, it makes complete sense for strategists to form alliances from smaller citizen cohorts in order to gain higher voter tallies. But when the task is actual governing, leaders need to be more skilled in identifying and promoting broad-based policies designed to positively effect the largest population swath as possible.

Regarding the population as a whole encourages government to specify large-scale, wide-ranging, and comprehensive policy initiatives that are rooted in culturally recognizable common sense. It focuses on what unites us more than what what divides us. When dispersion of government induced benefits are enjoyed by more people, leading to far-reaching problem resolutions and improvements in the lives of people, then government is seen as more benevolent and less intrusive. Communities that might be seen as unrelated and disparate when studied at close range become part of a wider fabric mutually strengthened by their common national government.

This is the kind of all-inclusive governing paradigm I hope Democrats adopt in the years ahead. Citizens who feel forgotten and left out by their government need not and should not feel that way. Grievances abound whether coming from Trumpism or recent immigrants or any of the other demographic groupings which exist. I urge the Democrats to skillfully address these complaints and injustices in a thematic and integrated policy-driven manner combined with a strong intention to not leave anyone out. Inclusivity should be a term people think of immediately when they think of Democrats. It is not only consistent with the historic desire to help “the people” and the disenfranchised, but may actually get some of these Trumpists to ease up on their cultural fear and paranoia of being left out and marginalized long enough to rejoin the world of the sane.

For quite some time now I have wished the Democratic Party would enthusiastically adopt an “Opportunity for All” ethic. Instead of trying to please this group or accommodate that group, the go big and go wide game plan most often associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt seems particularly cogent at this time. Since Ronald Reagan, the New Deal has been on defense. Practicing fiscal conservatism and restraining deficit spending have been to greater and lesser degrees the marching orders for Washington since the 1980s. However, given the cyclical nature of American politics, the time now appears right to exercise an activist federal government unabashedly advocating for citizen support in finance, education, healthcare, social justice, and equity. Together these interventions provide opportunity for each individual and family to succeed in America. It is unrealistic to predict specifically what outcomes each individual will realize as a result of such governmental support, but there should be no question that each person is provided with the means to actualize their potential no matter where they fall in the demographic mix. The “Land of Opportunity” has become a quaint and unfulfilled slogan in need of revitalization. The Democrats should lead this effort.

Opportunity for All speaks to what is the major principle of the modern Democratic Party—equality. Where the energy on the political right is about liberty, the vitality on the left is centered on equality. Given that liberty and equality are of, well, equal weight one would think the two sides should be able to function together to forge comprehensive agreements honoring these core principles that point to what is best about America. Regardless, the Democrats are best at taking up the mantle of equality. Thank God someone is. Equal treatment, equal justice, and equal rights are key areas in need of powerful champions. Equality is the Democrats’ North Star and it should guide the development and execution of all Democrats do politically and in governance. Opportunity for All fits ever so neatly into this ethic.

Opportunity for All also of course includes more than the working class. A clear trend over the past generation has been the expansion of the knowledge economy with its growing segment of the college educated not afraid to play on a global stage and who seem to be attracting large amounts of capital. Encouraging Americans to be smart and competitive is not a bad thing as long as it does not lead to exclusionary practices of who is allowed or not to participate in sharing of the gains, resulting in excessive wealth inequality. All economic signs point to globalization and technological advances as being prime economic shapers for the foreseeable future. Democrats should encourage our capacity to engage economically with our global competition given this new world order.

The challenge of our nation’s founders and framers of our Constitution for each subsequent generation has been to carry forth the republican principles of the United States. These principles emphasize liberty, individual rights, and sovereignty, while shunning power based in aristocracy, monarchy, and corruption. To date, each generation has to greater and lesser degrees continued this tradition despite wars, social turbulence, and technological changes. Now it is our turn. America is in the process of becoming a more racially and ethnically diverse society representing influences from around the world. The face of America may be changing, but the mission has not. Our test is best encapsulated by Martin Luther King, Jr. who preached that we are all equal and should benefit from the same rights and privileges.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” This grasps the spirit and the goal of the Democrat Party as we advance today and tomorrow. Let’s get to work.

Between the lunch and dinner shifts I would be allowed a break from my dish washing duties at the Kittansett Club in Marion, Massachusetts. This was during the summer of 1973. If the weather was sunny, but with a light breeze, I would often choose to sit among the boulders, which were closely packed together where the end of Butler Point meets Buzzards Bay. For many of these days I carried with me a worn paperback book with a bright blue cover entitled Future Shock.

I was among the many readers and neophyte futurists to gobble up that book, starting when it was published in 1970. Although I was three years late to the party, by then I knew about the scope and flavor of the book’s buzz. It attracted me. And the book did not disappoint.

Alvin Toffler set out to highlight the importance of change among populations, cultures, and individuals. In particular, change that is ever more accelerated, novel, widespread, and challenging. Toffler was a futurist, professor, correspondent, and businessman. During the mid-1960s he and his wife Heidi detected that technology was hastening cultural change worldwide. This led to five years of research, resulting in the book Future Shock, which has sold many millions of copies, has been translated into numerous languages, and is still in print fifty years later.

Even as a kid, I found the notion of The Future to be fascinating. My mother may have unwittingly been a part of the reason why. Having grown up, if you could call it that, in wartime Germany in the late 1930s and 1940s, she always had a special admiration for things “modern” once she became a young mother and U.S. citizen in 1950s America. Later on she became a big fan of the NASA space program, the Mercury 7 astronauts, the Saturn 5 launches, the capsule retrievals in the ocean, and so on. I shared with her a love for that slice of American lore.

On my own, I loved science fiction when I was young. Those black & white after-school space movies channels 6, 10, and 13 out of Albany used to broadcast (along with the monster movies of course) were fun and imaginative. History also held an long time allure, so it wasn’t a big leap to shift my attention from the past to the future. How people lived and how they will live still remain appealing topics. Hence, my revisitation of Future Shock.

However, aside from a recreational interest in futurism, there is also my curiosity about Toffler’s prescience. We live today in what was his future. Given his forecasting was generally in the twenty to fifty-year range and now that we’ve passed the fifty-year mark I have found intriguing the idea of assessing his outlook. Alvin Toffler, who passed away in 2016, continues to have a reputation as an exceptional futurist. So, presumably he had an astute ability to both evaluate the etiology of profound changes and envision how they would eventually be expressed by individuals and societies.

Change forms the foundation of futurism. Change also brings out of people revealing aspects about how they process life. It seems as if change is more feared than welcomed. A lot of folks like things just the way they are and actively shun change. Of course, there are exclusions as with some individuals thriving continuous novelty while others live with life stories that scream for something better. Nonetheless, these types of people appear to be exceptions to the rule. By way of observation, most folks remain rooted after their hard-fought scramble to establish stability and security in their status quo.

Change management, or lack thereof, can be seen as a personality or social trait. Some leverage the possibilities and opportunities inherent in change, while others are more reactive and resistant. Large-scale change in and of itself is neutral. How it is perceived and engaged determines if it is to be handled as an asset or as a liability.

The question often asked is, does change represent an improvement or a setback? Clearly then, this challenge of people adapting to or defying change has huge implications for how societies either progress or stagnate. So, another impetus for reviewing Future Shock is to discern if Toffler provided us with an astute warning fifty years ago which perhaps went unheeded. If so, were we left by Toffler with a useful methodology for these times that deserves another look?

Therefore, an analysis of the premise, contention, and predictability of Future Shock will disclose the validity of Toffler’s fifty-year-old thesis. Of particular interest is the soundness of futurism as a worthy forewarning mechanism for societies to follow and also how the book may lend some insight into the possibly flawed conventional wisdom concerning opposition to change. 

Alvin Toffler wanted to get America’s attention in a big way. After all, one doesn’t insert the word “shock” into the description of their central argument and include it in their book’s title unless the intent is to jolt and startle. To that end, Toffler was successful as noted above. However, beyond selling a lot of books and presumably making substantial money, he was convinced humankind had reached a profound threshold by the mid-twentieth century that called for a bellowing admonition. The world as it was known in the mid to late 1960s was undergoing accelerated change, impacting not just that time, but more alarmingly ushering in an uncertain and potentially fraught and dangerous future. A cautionary portrayal of what was being faced by the American public, and by extension the so-called ‘First World’ population of his time, set the dark tone of this book. This is not a light and breezy read. Sure, he pointed out positivity and wise judgment being exhibited by some people capable of meeting the future when and where he saw it, but in general he seemed to see ordinary citizens and their leaders as totally unqualified to withstand, never mind benefit from, the onslaught of rapid technical and social transformation that had been unleashed.

Adaptation is a crucial ability. When applied to organisms it depicts the vital steps necessary for survival and continuation of the species. Biologically, adaptation is seen as both behavioral and physical. How organisms interact with their environments in terms of decisive actions and optimal body structure determines if they will endure or face extinction. Regarding modern humans, adaptation is largely a consequence of how intellect is utilized. People operate such that the handling of constraints and possibilities offered by their environment resolve whether they will thrive or founder. Mental acuity and creativity become indispensable in facing basic problems integral to human existence.

Indeed, whole cultures are incessantly challenged to adapt to dynamic and difficult conditions. In 2005, Jared Diamond wrote a compelling book called Collapse, in which he delved into the disintegration of several cultures throughout history that had failed to adapt to changing social and ecological circumstances. Cultural failure has happened before. And it seems imprudent, if not fatuous, to think it won’t happen again.

How we as humans adapt or not when faced with rapidly changing social and physical environments is the premise of Future Shock. The book’s purpose is to shepherd us through the turmoil of accelerated change by suggesting coping mechanisms, alternative attitudes, and reframed perspectives. The urgency Toffler saw was one of people needing to develop, if not command, their capacity to manage the rate of change washing over their individual circumstances and their affiliate society. Not doing so would shackle civilization to “adaptational breakdown” or “disease of change”, also known as future shock.

Unquestioningly, Toffler pointed to the proliferation of technology as the catalyst for hastened change. This is not to say he was a Luddite and opposed to technological advances. He was far from such a position. Rather, he saw technology as irritating the vulnerable space between externally derived change and human responses to it. Technology is innately new, different, innovative, and strange all at once. At the individual level and eventually at the social level, technology insists on adoption or rejection by the market. It was clear by the 1960s, if not sooner, that the tempo of novel technology introductions was quickening. An inflection point had been reached.

New technologies come with both direction and pace. Presumably they are established to solve a problem or add an improvement to what has gone on before. Fine. Enhancements and efficiencies should be welcomed. However, if the preponderance of technologies is such that the ‘old ways’ are continually being questioned and contested there can result disequilibrium and resistance. Therefore, to assess in isolation the justification, substance, and value of technology and the change it brings is shortsighted. The velocity of change must also be considered when determining if a new practice or process alteration should be judged as either a welcomed benefit or a shunned liability. Toffler took this perspective. He didn’t question the essence or merits of technological change nearly as much as the propagation rate of such change.

When I decided to re-engage Future Shock I found myself yearning to see if Toffler’s predictions for the future had been accurate or overly speculative or wildly missing the mark. My porous 50-year old memory assumed Toffler must have made predictions of the future like the old-fashioned world fairs used to do. I certainly remembered this was a book about the future, so prophecy must have been a big part of it. Turns out, I was somewhat mistaken. My recent re-reading of the book made clear early on that this was not meant to be a crystal ball in book form. Whereas, Toffler did engage in speculation about social and scientific trends and the yet-to-be-realized practices associated with them he expected his readers to know his conjectures were best guesses based on available quantifiable and qualitative information, flavored with a dash of imagination. Toffler decidedly stated, “No serious futurist deals in predictions.”

That said, I evaluate where Toffler was generally on and where he was generally off with regards to his main thesis. Has future shock been the severe affliction he thought it could be? If so, where is the evidence of future shock in our current time and if none is to be found, why not? Did the cultural, social, business, education, and technological trends he suggested as possible materialize or not? Did humankind ever learn the skills of adaption to control rapid technological change? Are we still individually or societally in danger of the negative effects of future shock? Can the future be utilized to improve the present time similar to the way study of the past has been found to be helpful? These are the kinds of questions I seek to answer.

Rereading a book you remember being enjoyable and impactful fifty years later is fun. (Maybe I should consider picking up again Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I remember really loving that one.) My overall impression this time around is that Future Shock attempted a bold and valid assertion. It also was impeccably researched. I get why it was groundbreaking and in many ways it still holds up. In general, Toffler was justified in popularizing the notion that technological change was gaining momentum with such unrestrained speed that the population could be at risk for psychological and sociological disruption. Replacing tradition with transience was an untested phenomenon.

Toffler revealed how increased knowledge was clearly fueling change, but not visibly informing people about how to adapt to it. Evidence was presented demonstrating how abundant novelty, innovation, and change can result in individual and group instability.  Anecdote after anecdote illustrating defiance of change among the wider public was also shown. The easily perceived mismatch between our capacity to intentionally merge rapid revolution with able adaptation must have seemed very conspicuous to Toffler and surely shouted for a clarion call such as Future Shock. He had a well-founded and authoritative reason to write this book. He also was not only quite prescient at times, but prudent in his counsel.

From the start, Toffler was correct to question our addiction to permanence. It is completely understandable, if not poetic, to revere traditions, customs, cultural mores, and tried and true methods passed down to us from generation to generation. There is comfort in connecting with the past and embracing time-honored conventions. Ambiguity, and with it stress, are diminished. We can be more at ease. Nonetheless, an over-reliance or excessive dependence on permanence leaves us ill prepared for a truism about our existences. Life is always subject to change. There is no such thing as the completely static life. Desperate or habitual clinging to constancy will eventually lead to disappointment, anxiety, and pain.

This reality is strongly reinforced by the Indian religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, where we see the concept of impermanence addressed so prominently. In short, these philosophical traditions state that attachment to people, things, and ideas is a fool’s errand, because they will all change or cease thereby leaving suffering in their wake. To reverse this pattern, which is carried out person by person and generation after generation, it is necessary to relinquish a craving for permanence. Toffler recognized we were set up for future shock, if for no other reason than because we ordinarily cling to changelessness. We are not primed to cope with the degree of change showering over us.

Toffler adeptly zeroed in on the causes for mass psychological distress and unease. Intensifying conditions without historical precedence were mushrooming mid-century at such a robust rate, questions about where it was all heading were naturally going to arise. A child in 1903 could have heard about the Wright brothers pioneering success in aviation and lived to an old age that witnessed astronauts walking on the Moon. This same child might have traveled to a rural school on horseback and driven a Corvette during their retirement sixty years later. Progress was revered and in many ways welcomed given the expansion of labor-saving improvements and fresh entertaining distractions suddenly made available. Nevertheless, mixed into this seductive lifestyle-shifting were disconcerting signs indicating all may not be well in the brave new world of modern America.

The exacerbation of transience, novelty, and diversity lay at the root of the personal and social torment most concerning Toffler. Even if we see these three trends as potentially positive, which of course they can be, there can still occur such a fast-paced proliferation of these developments that they are essentially rendered encumbrances. Coping mechanisms are required to manage the intensity and consequences of elevated levels of transience, novelty, and diversity. And it is just these management safeguards which are missing from wide swaths of the American and western populations.

Toffler succeeded in not only communicating the origins of future shock, but also the manifestations of unmanaged stress and relentless overstimulation. Future shock is displayed both psychologically and physically. Adaptation, or lack of it, was researched yielding studies and cases revealing physiological degradation and illness of individuals overexposed to change. Furthermore, he detailed the existence of an “orientation response”, denoting how people mentally adapt to external alterations. Our brains construct stores of previously assimilated information and use these impressions to reference and rate the quality and characteristics of new stimuli. Applying our orientation response requires mental and physical energy, not unlike being repeatedly startled. Repetitions of this reaction can leave one feeling stressed, similar to too much triggering of our ‘flight or fight response’. Symptoms can range from anxiety, apathy, and difficulty making decisions to uncertainty about what long lasting values to adopt.

In 2016, Robert Gordon of Northwestern University wrote a landmark book asserting that American economic and living standards underwent remarkable progress during what he described as the “Special Century”, 1870-1970. The Rise and Fall of American Growth enumerated how modernizing transformations in transportation, the home, food, apparel, retail, healthcare, and employment not only propelled economic growth, but vastly boosted the well-being of American society. Given our retrospective perch we can now see how Toffler’s viewpoint came from the end of that bullish stretch. To him it very well may have seemed there was no end in sight of more and more life-changing transitions.

I know what you might be thinking. But wait, the technology that would lead to the personal computer was just getting started. In the 1960s the guys at Fairchild Semiconductor in California, like Gordon Moore, were starting to make the claim that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit were now doubling every two years (Moore’s Law). Vast game-changing transfigurations were just around the corner. How can you say the Special Century was ending when the information revolution was getting ready to explode? As Robert Gordon points out, the splash of technology over the past 50 years, while impressive and compelling has not vaulted us into the level of elemental change or economic growth wrought by the life-fulfilling innovations evident during the Special Century. Toffler, on the other hand, had his recent past as his reference point and it showed a progression of radical changes of the type highlighted by Gordon. It made every sense to think the nascent but burgeoning technology sector would lead to a continuation of critical changes.

This lack of, well, future orientation may be in part the reason for some of Toffler’s overzealous prognostications. To begin with, Toffler seems to have overstated people’s inability to cope with the future. We have largely succeeded thus far to avoid mass psycho-biological paralysis. Future shock has not been as egregious of a “disease” as he thought possible. History has marched on these past fifty years and by and large we have weathered the storm of invention and disruption thrown at us. If anything, the eruption of technological change has made us more resilient and versatile. This is not to say there have been no instances of people confounded by technological changes to the degree they have felt frustrated or even debilitated, but overall the scale of psycho-emotional catastrophe imagined by Toffler is of a tamer magnitude than he thought likely.

Toffler also relied a lot on an ‘intentional community’ model when offering change management suggestions. For example, his idea of streamlining the family as an efficient and simplified mobile collection of two parents with similar careers and few children. If this arrangement were to become too restrictive to the all-business couple there could be “professional parents” whose job it would be to do the child rearing. Presumably the breadwinners were to schedule regular meetings to check in on their kids. Another case in point involves “preadaption”. To avoid the anxiety of frequent transitions to new locations, jobs, schools, etc. families could engage with a structured orientation, featuring simulations and remote meetings with key players from the new city. It is not evident practices like these have flourished.

There are many such instances in which Toffler proposed engineered and calibrated changes for people and communities as an alternative to experiencing abrupt upheavals in any number of areas of life. Whether these arrangements were to be centrally controlled by government or some other entity or whether they were to sprout organically among well-meaning citizens is rarely clarified. Regardless, after awhile these recommendations start sounding too contrived and unrealistic. Also of note, people are not as willing to be managed as Toffler seemed to think they were. As Toffler made clear, futurists are not in the prediction game, as counter-intuitive as that may sound. It’s good he clarified as much, because his forecasts make for a mixed bag as best.

When reviewing the changes of the past fifty years much has indeed been driven by technological advances. However, technology alone has not been the sole catalyst. Rather applied science has functioned in tandem with other significant influences. A principal trend impacted by technology and a source of great change was the resurgence of neoliberalism as the prevailing economic model of the U.S. during this time. Although neoliberalism is often associated with free-market capitalism it also promotes elements that have dominated the past fifty years such as globalization and free trade. Our ability to extend interactions and integrations across the globe via information technologies has come to define our current turbulent times.

In fact, remote connections among people affect not just international economic and cultural relations, but national and local ones as well. Social media has so ensnared the interests of so many that the generation and dissemination of information, both factual and not, is directly transforming our politics and dealings with one another. Privacy as well is becoming a quaint virtue of the past. We are all being rendered to data points as public and private institutions ascribe to Big Data serviceability models. So yes, technology is a phenomenon common to the consequential changes of the past half-century, but technology’s impact is most felt in its capacity to influence the dynamics of governmental, economic, and cultural trends.

If Future Shock were to be written today my guess is that Artificial Intelligence (AI) would play a major role. Just as Toffler was warranted in writing a cautionary tome in the 1960s when it was apparent the world was changing in unique ways, the 2020s can also be seen as on the precipice of an uncertain future. Like the technologies of the ’60s, which were billed as developments and improvements over what had been, AI is promising to introduce greater efficiencies of functional systems, problem solving and production processes, increased leisure time, and on and on. And again, as in the ’60s, this new fangled technology of AI ushers in ethical questions of appropriateness, risks, and unanticipated consequences.

We study history to better inform ourselves about the present. By not repeating mistakes from the past we can improve the quality of the current moment. Futurism also attempts to influence ongoing time, but instead of delving into recorded history to do so futurism identifies possible upcoming scenarios based on an analysis of existing trends, signals, and patterns with available pertinent data. Perhaps the best way to avoid future shock and a lack of adaptation is by undertaking a systemic process of strengthening preparedness. To actively prepare for change may be the best way to adapt. A good offense makes the best defense. Toffler’s work in this regard still makes sense today.

In conclusion, the morale of this story is that from some point in the last two centuries the future ceased to materialize as an unchanging and reoccurring episode as it had been throughout much of human history. Futures will forever more be uncertain. Therefore, for each new generation futures are now to be seen as planned, structured, and envisaged to determine if they will turn out to be either good or bad. The challenge of intentionally addressing and if possible shaping the future with all of its potential and jeopardy is owed to our descendants. The Anthropocene is upon us. We are God’s agents on earth. There is no time for future shock to impede us. Yes, let’s seize each and every day in our present time, but also leave a future worthy of enthusiastic grasping by our children and their children.

Trail Cat

Walking steeply down a hilly and remote Scottish footpath

On a glorious sunny Spring day

When below us emerging from the wood and crossing the stream

Appear two women with several young children

But wait! What is that?

Trotting determinedly along behind the last child

Like a loyal dog

Was a cat! A trail cat

Yes, a cat was marching with the women and children

A sleek, gray, attentive, and unusually compliant cat

The troupe climbed the hill toward us and we stepped aside

Ascending slowly but dutifully up the hill the cat panted

Uncommon sight it is to see a cat huff and puff

After a brief pause to study us

The cat answered to its name called from up the path

And resumed its hike leaving us to gape in surprise at the trail cat

An Unspoken Conversation

It’s a conversation he hasn’t wanted to have with himself.

Even though he knows it is necessary to do so.

Funny to think of avoiding a topic of which only he knows.

No one else need judge or reprimand.

He could speak to himself, but does not.

And that too scares him.

Pain and despair press down making it hard to breathe.

This weight suppresses any light or spirit he may have remaining.

There is no one else to blame.

Decisions were made.

Risks were taken.

The only one holding him back from taking the next step is him.

But, the future is wide open and so very frightening.

Back Among the Trees

We came back in late May.

The trees had fully leafed a couple of weeks earlier.

They’re hovering now over us and the house in a quiet, but imposing manner.

The wind is still and so are the trees.

But they can still shoot the color green all over and around us.

And the oaks alpha over the maple, birch, and beech.

These are things one notices.

Such can be life living under a dome-like canopy.

In a forested land that rolls and stretches as far as the eye can see.

The Rain

The Spring on the coast of western Scotland was very rainy. Unsurprisingly.

The Scots seemed to take it in stride and some let on they even appreciate it.

Returning to New Hampshire we found the Spring to be dry. Surprisingly.

The rain today clears pollen from the air.

And gives the thirsty plants a wee, but so far insufficient drink.

Usually I do not like rainy days.

They depress me and leave me feeling confined and annoyed.

Like an energetic child stuck inside a boring house.

But occasionally a rainy day comes along that soothes and comforts.

I make an extra pot of coffee to nurse throughout the day.

Allow myself more daytime reading than usual.

Listen to the steady sound of water striking leaves and ground.

It can be easier to sense the rhythm of nature.

On one of the good rainy days.

How Old People Can Keep Fit

Remember what we did so naturally as children?

Run

Jump

Stretch

Bend

Climb

Lift

Roll

Crawl

Reach

Kneel

Swing

Fall

Crouch

Hop

Skip

Twist

Dig

Balance

Squat

Flip

Let’s continue doing these activities as old adults.

(Except maybe Flip)

Doing so keeps us feeling alive.

The Introvert

People

Interactions, relationships, encounters, friendships

Reveal cringe-worthy memories.

Moments that produce anxieties, fears, fumbles, gaffes, regrets.

And of course, faux pas.

People

Was I smart enough?

Friendly enough?

Witty enough?

Charming enough?

Moral enough?

People

Cant’ live with ’em. Can’t live without ’em.

So many feelings to hurt, offenses to make, blunders to smooth over.

People

Avoid them purposefully.

Shift my focus.

Choose solitary tasks.

Allow thoughts to wander.

Reclaim a center.

People

Sorry, but I am out, done, finished.

Forever.

Seasonal Affective Mood

The muted light

illuminates the woods

in yellow.

Lively winds

from the northwest

send dry leaves

fluttering and spinning

to the ground.

Despite this beauty

I feel apprehension.

Another lengthy, frigid, dark, and biting

winter is just around

the corner.

The stratus clouds

are steely gray today.

They form a canvas

against which a V-shaped

flock of honking geese

fly south.

Firewood is stacked.

Flower gardens put to bed.

Colorful summer gear stowed.

The precious sun

sinks lower in the sky.

And I brace

myself for the advancing

onslaught.

The Bicycle

A borrowed bicycle

belonged to the homestay

in Hoi An

where I stayed.

Old and red

it rekindled a sentiment

of being a kid again.

I wove through a street market,

past tropical houses,

along dusty roads,

toward the sea.

Being a foreigner

among natives and locals

of Vietnam

who barely gave a notice

to this American

riding through their homeland.

This land

spoke fear and war

to my teenage years.

But today

the sun is warm

the ocean is bright blue

I am free

to ride a bicycle

across this land.

Listening Intently

We walk along the dirt road

located through the old woods

that was once a stagecoach route

which started carrying passengers in 1831

from Hanover to Lowell in a single day.

Today, as is true most days,

the road is quiet and seemingly still

as it penetrates this patch of forest

with its tumbledown stone walls

and a visible opening left over

from a logging operation five years ago.

We pass the pond with its far-off view of Mount Sunapee

as soon the road begins its rise to a stand of hemlock

where the wide path to the right invites

us to the lonely clearing on Shadow Hill

that displays the remnants of a campfire

and a high view of the pond and western hills.

Here the dog is off-leash sniffing and exploring

as I try to read the story of today’s woods

told cunningly and gently

through blowing of soft winds and solitary warbling of birds

and filtered light amplifying the lapping of water against the steep hill.

For those with an awareness and an attentive ear

and a consciousness which takes in the delicate vibrations of nature

can also be heard the orchestra of trees growing

with fallen wood rotting and humus decomposing

and the creaks and groans of water freezing

all punctuated by the tone of the decaying flesh

of a squirrel who lived its brief life among these trees.

A Day

Another day to float through.

Free of agenda and schedule.

Except for picking up your pieces.

Or so I tell myself.

What did you say?

I couldn’t hear you clearly.

You know, I’m not what you think.

Although maybe you know that.

With your head thrown back.

And your eyes closed and mouth gaping.

Excuse me, but…

Choices are strange, you know.

Life is a lot of risky business.

With stinging rebukes.

And nods of agreement.

Just by stumbling through another day.

Which reminds me.

Of the confusion of youth.

And silly false choices.

Combined with conflicting images.

From 1973.

Of cornfield mazes.

Abandoned gold mines.

Hitchhiking through Ohio.

Trying to be alternative.

While embracing middle class life.

And doing neither particularly well.

Doesn’t matter now.

It’s in the past.

Heaven and Hell can wait.

There’s more living to be done.

Beneath the full moon.

Which was here before birth.

And will be here after death.

My heart had finally settled back to its natural rhythm a short while earlier. My mind on the other hand had not. It had been about an hour since the near miss on NY Route 67 as it neared Interstate 87 north of Albany. The fright I experienced once I realized my tires were starting to be overpowered by the shoulder’s soft sand was a slap to my psyche. An oncoming van drifted into my lane forcing me to the right. Thankfully, the van’s driver snapped to in enough time to center the vehicle within its lane, but not before I found myself contending with several seconds of outright uncertainty, and to be honest fright, as to whether or not I would lurch sideways, flatten the 1960’s era guard rails, and land starboard side on a downward sloping embankment with a full load of beer, soft drinks, and bottled water.

Twenty-two year’s worth of driving know-how together with a sudden visit by Lady Luck prevented the worst from happening. Optimally calibrating a soft touch on the brake with subtle steering allowed me to securely grab enough pavement to right myself. With a jerk the truck was back on the road again heading east in the direction of New Hampshire instead of sliding downhill into a ravine.

It took a minute before I cursed aloud. I imagined having my thickset hands around the van driver’s throat and squeezing until he (or she) went limp. This image stayed with me longer than it probably should have, but such is rage. I wasn’t feeling very analytical or understanding or sympathetic. I was pissed. Eventually, as I replayed the incident in my mind I had to admit it wasn’t necessary to pull my rig so hard to the right as quickly as I had. There was clearly an element of overreaction involved. And I do recognize that sometimes my overreactions were more trouble than the initial cause. Fatigue more than likely played a role. After all, I had driven twenty-five of the previous forty hours, by far breaking trucking regulations. Truth be told, I was a wreck physically and emotionally. I just wanted to get home.

Sarah would be there. Ahh, Sarah. I knew she wanted more in life than to be settled with me in our mostly finished simple prefab house a couple of miles from the village in our desperately rural Sullivan County town. The truth was, I was the best she could do back when we met. At least that is the narrative I’ve been telling myself since she moved in six years ago. With little money, an ex-boyfriend who her threw her out, an abandoned GED program, but with a country-girl cuteness that still weakens my knees, I offered to take care of her. That’s what girls want, right? A man to take care of them.

She took two days to think about it, but eventually showed up in my driveway just as I was returning from a run to Connecticut. We had sex for hours that night. I thought I had won the lottery. But even though I could tell she didn’t share that level of excitement about me as I did her, I told myself, no worries. She’ll come around. She’ll realize I am the best she’s going to do.

And then Sarah announced a few months ago she was pregnant. She took the test to tell us the baby was to be a boy. I was both thrilled and scared. I hadn’t planned on becoming a dad and was afraid it would change my life too much. However, the more I thought about it the more pride I felt. Unexpectedly, the idea of being a father made me feel more complete, more proper, more mature. I liked that feeling. Knowing Sarah was going to have a baby boy made going home after a run like this a little better than before. I looked forward to seeing her in a way I hadn’t in the past. That was how I felt that afternoon. Ready to be home with my girlfriend who was going to have our baby. I shook off what remained of the jitters from the near-accident and continued driving east across Vermont. It would dark by the time I got home, but not too late. One more cup of coffee should do it, I thought.

It’s funny how a certain kind of outdoor space, a natural space, can shift my mood in an instant. I’ve driven this route west to east through Vermont many times and it contains several views on the roadside that catch my eye, give me slight pause, and induce calmness. Today, it was the one with a sweeping hillside that is grassy and kept clear of overgrowth due to having been hayed a couple of times per season presumably and which reaches a line of stout oaks on a hilltop forming a tight canopy. In the late afternoon on sunny days the hill and trees receive an angled light, which amplifies the colors and brightens the picture just the way I like it. Glancing this image for a mere two or three seconds as my truck rumbled by brought me a momentary feeling of peace and contentment. Things were feeling better. The near-accident was fading away from my thoughts.

My coffee was nearly done when I crossed over the river into New Hampshire and then south on route 12A. I pulled the rig to the outside edge of a parking lot near Walmart, so I could run in and get Sarah a bag of peanut butter cups. She’ll like that I did that, I thought. Twenty more minutes or so and I’ll be home. Once back on 12A I again appreciated my not having flipped the rig back in New York. Getting home in one piece felt like a reward.

Something felt off as soon as I stepped from the mudroom door into the kitchen. Sarah’s ‘hello’ to me was inauthentic, almost guarded. Her smile seemed somewhat forced. The air felt thicker than usual for some reason. I instantly sensed anxiety and apprehension seep into my consciousness. I hated times that didn’t go right. Suddenly, this felt like one of them.

She reached for can of seltzer sitting on the kitchen counter. It allowed her to take her eyes from mine, if only for a moment. I told Sarah I would be right back. I took my travel bag to my small office off of the living room where I dropped it to the floor thinking, I’ll need to ask her what’s wrong, because it sure felt as if something must be wrong.

While asking Sarah, what’s up, I opened the refrigerator door to grab a beer and noticed two six-packs of unrecognizable beer. I knew it was some sort of expensive craft beer, the kind of thing I never wasted money on and confusingly, either did Sarah. There were also two unopened bottles of pinot grigio, which is Sarah’s drink. Or at least it was before she became pregnant. But even before pregnancy, she typically kept only one opened bottle in the fridge at a time. Not two unopened ones. This didn’t look right.

I asked if she was planning a party or something. Her face looked fake. A mixture of discomfort and unease. Bubbling from her were insincere comments like, “Party?! No, of course not. I thought you might like to try a different kind of beer. So I’ve got some booze in the fridge. It’s not that big of a deal, is it?”

As I said, “I don’t get it”, a pickup rushed past the house on our dirt road kicking up a cloud of dust. Through the living room picture window I saw what looked like the back of Frank’s F-150, a good friend of mine in town. For a split second I thought, what is Frank doing around here now and why the speeding by without a stop?

I turned back toward Sarah. She had noticed the truck as well. Fear was spread across her face. She tried to hide it, but it was unmistakable. “What’s going on, Sarah?” I was tired and now feeling stressed. Sarah was pissing me off with her evasion and now this sudden look of dread. “Tell me what the fuck is going on, Sarah!”

She couldn’t or wouldn’t speak. Sarah never was a good liar. And her silence told me she wasn’t going to even try. Her eyes began to moisten and her mouth opened slightly as if she wanted to speak, but no words came out. Sarah’s left hand then slowly moved toward her raised stomach where it rested. My eyes followed her hand as she touched our baby.

I may not be the brightest bulb in the marquee, but I eventually do figure most things out. Frank! He drinks those fancy-boy beers! Was he coming here to drink them with Sarah? My heart quickened. The silence was broken.

“I’m so sorry,” Sarah said. “I didn’t know you were coming home today. Thought you would be in Buffalo tonight. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Are those beers Frank’s? Tell me what you’re up to! Tell me now! Don’t bullshit me, Sarah! You and Frank were going to drink? And you’re pregnant! You’re not drinking these days. That was him driving by just now, wasn’t it? And he didn’t stop.”

Sarah started to answer me. “Me and Frank…we…don’t want trouble…have to do this. She quickly turned from me, grabbed her purse from the kitchen table, and bolted from the house to her Corolla. My surprise at her unexpected flight was momentarily paralyzing. By the time I got outside she had started her car and jammed it into reverse, barely maintaining control on the road. And then she was gone.

Sarah and Frank? What the fuck?! I gasped for air. A sinking feeling in my gut took hold as I realized my whole world had just collapsed. My blood reaching the boiling temperature gave me the energy and motivation to act. On a wall of my office hung my Ruger American hunting rifle. From my desk I grabbed the box of .30 caliber rounds and loaded the gun.

My mind was racing. “He’s been screwing around with Sarah while I’m on the road? I’m gonna kill him. I’ll blow his fucking head off!”

There was no sadness. No remorse. No second guessing. Just a feeling of disbelief mashed up with rage, leading to a single goal. To kill Frank. My truck was in the barn where I kept it while I was away on the road. With the rifle resting in the gun rack behind me, I charged dangerously fast to Frank’s place. Upon arriving, my truck vaulted from the road to his front lawn, leaving deep ruts where I had slammed on the brakes.

His truck was in the driveway. Behind it was Sarah’s Corolla. “I’m gonna kill you Frank, you bastard! Get out here!” I shrieked at the house.

There was no response. I screamed some more. Still no response. I figured Frank had his gun ready to use on me if I tried getting into the house, but I didn’t care. To get their attention I started shooting out the windows of his Ford and of Sarah’s car as well.

Strangely, it never occurred to me that the scene I was making would bring out the police. Even before I started shooting, Mrs. Lambeau who lived across the street from Frank’s house must have heard me, seen me with the rifle, and called the town police station. Officer Charpentier must have been the only one on duty to take the call, because she is who showed up to confront me.

“Put the gun down on the ground and step away from it, Mr. Dean,” Officer Charpentier called out from behind the town cruiser. “Once you do that we can talk about this. Do what I ask right now, please.”

“Not until I blow Frank’s brains out!” I yelled back to the police officer.

She responded with, “I’m not going to let you do that, Mr. Dean.” I saw that her service weapon was drawn. “Now put the rifle down slowly onto the ground and back away from it in my direction.”

“C’mon, Jim. Do as she says. Put it down.” Roy from down the road was speaking from the back of an oak on the corner of Frank’s property.

“Thank you, sir, but I have this,” Officer Charpentier said to Roy.

“So, Jim,” Officer Charpentier said to me in her even voice, “follow my directions and put the gun down.”

I don’t think it was what the town police officer said, but how she said it. Officer Charpentier was composed, steady, and taking command of the situation. As I listened, I was able to regain a shred of mental acuity. Enough clarity of thought anyway to allow me to realize Sarah was gone. As pissed as I was, she wasn’t coming back to me. I was no longer wanted. My breathing dialed down from huge gasps of air. I put down the gun on the lawn and walked to the cruiser.

The pain of the entire experience lives with me today, many years later. I would put it that I’m hurt and wounded more than I am defeated. I have my son a couple of days a week and I have something of a life. Working on being grateful for what I have is something I really do try to work on. Yet, crying comes to me much more easily than it used to and I kick at the rickety old boards of my barn in frustration a lot. It’s just that the anguish of betrayal, lost trust, and rejection continues to haunt me. Why we don’t make the best of our short time on earth, I’ll never know. I’ll just never know.